


Shiver ME Relays

by TScorpio1701



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:00:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TScorpio1701/pseuds/TScorpio1701
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A newly minted Spectre has proven himself in the fires of war. Now he's about to embark on a new mission. Hunt down and end Cerberus before they drag humanity down with them!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Recruits

** Shiver ME Relays **

**Ch.1 First Recruits**

**Year 2185**

**The Citadel; Zakera Ward**

The Citadel. The so called beacon of civilization and the symbol of the Citadel Council’s power, all an illusion that so many bought hook, line, and sinker. Most of the damage done two years earlier by the Heretics, a mad splinter faction of the Geth, had been repaired. The only reason Zakera Ward wasn’t as heavily damaged as the other Wards was because of the rest of the Geth fleet that intervened and saved the Citadel and its defence Fleet and the Alliance 5thFleet.

That day had gone down in history as the first time that an organic and a synthetic civilization had been able to work together and make peace. The reason for the attack was a mystery to both the Geth Consensus and the Citadel races, but it had opened the door for diplomacy. It was the first time that the Geth had outlined their borders, which were beyond what used to be Quarian space, and they invited the Quarian Flotilla to return to their home world, Rannoch.

The Geth it seems had been acting as custodians of Rannoch for over 300 years and had repaired much of the damage caused by the Geth Uprising, what the Geth call the Morning War. The Quarians had been quick to take the offer and had asked for assistance from the Citadel races, which was answered by the Turian Hierarchy and the Asari Republics. The turians provided security, while the asari assisted with relief efforts.

All this went through the mind of a tall man, roughly six foot two inches, with short buzz-cut military hair style and piercing blue eyes watched the ships coming and going from an observation deck on Zakera Ward, one of the five arms of the Citadel, with the eyes of a predator. He wore standard N7 duty uniform with only an M6 Carnifex heavy pistol on his right hip in a quick-draw holster. Pistols being the only weapon allowed for personnel outside of C-Sec to carry.

His musing was soon cut short as an alert came from his omni-tool. His appointment was only minutes away, so he quickly began scanning the various advertisement terminals until he found the right one. A darkly dressed figure with a definitive feminine form and only the lower half of her pale face showed was displayed on one of them.

_“Commander Shepard, enter the password and receive a free gift!”_ she said with a slight Japanese accent. _“Looking for some quality companionship? Perhaps someone petite and Japanese might be to your liking?”_

Smirking slightly Shepard gave the password. “Silence is golden. On a personal note I might just take you up on that offer.”

She smirked back. _“Good to finally meet you Commander Shepard. Kasumi Goto. I’m a big fan of yours!”_

“I trust that our mutual friend told you about the job?” Shepard asked as he rubbed the back of his head, as if unseeing eyes were burning into it.

_“Honestly I’m shocked that she didn’t contact me sooner. My fault for being hard to find, I guess, though grand theft starship isn’t normally my MO,”_ said Kasumi with shrug. _“Did our mutual friend tell you the price for my assistance?”_

“She only had time to tell me that the meet was on. She has to watch her step considering the company she keeps these days. I’m assuming it’s something in connection with your profession?” he began looking around the open plaza, but Kasumi was nowhere in sight.

_“Something like that. I’m after my partner’s graybox. A man named Donovan Hock took it and I intend to take it back,”_ she said with a determined tone.

The mention of the graybox raised Shepard’s eyebrows. “Isn’t graybox technology notoriously difficult and close to impossible to hack?”

_“Yes, but it is only a matter of time and money before he cracks it. My old partner, Keiji Okuda, stole some information he shouldn’t have and made himself infamous in the underworld. That information got him killed. He wouldn’t say what it was, only that it could spark an interstellar war.”_

“I can agree to that, and I’m sure our mutual friend will agree too, but first I need some details,” said Shepard as he looked around again, but still saw nothing. “For starters, who is Donovan Hock?”

Kasumi’s normally pleasant smile thinned. _“Mister Hock is a well respected_ businessman _.”_ Shepard could hear the sarcasm dripping from her lips. _“Arms dealer, murderer, generally not a nice guy. His mansion is famous for being hard to crack, but I’ve got a way in. I’ll give you a full briefing later.”_

Suddenly Shepard heard the faint crackle of a tactical cloak disengaging at the same time as the electronic billboard sank into the floor, causing him to instinctively turn around and draw his pistol.

“Impressive instincts and reflexes, Commander,” she said as she raised her hands in mock surrender. “Not many can sense when they are being watched. We should probably wrap this up. You look pretty silly talking to an advertisement. I’m assuming that our transport is the _Rules of Acquisition_ in docking bay D-21?”

Shepard smirked back as he replaced his gun back into its holster. “I believe you know the way, however I’d like you to stay close for a little while. You know security and surveillance systems better than most so-called experts, and I want you looking out for any bugs or eaves droppers. It should also be a good show.”

With a soft sway of her hips she nodded and walked away, disappearing with a crackle of cloaking tech and disappeared from view with no light distortion.

“No wonder Miranda said she’s the best thief in the galaxy,” Shepard mused as he consulted his omni-tool for his next recruit. The mission he was on required certain specialists. He already had the pick of the best in the Alliance Forces, but he wanted to ‘stack the deck’ in his favour, and had asked both Rear-Admiral Hackett and Alliance Intelligence for a list of the best mercenaries and soldiers in the galaxy, and most of them frequented the Citadel. He had also asked for people who had personal experience with Cerberus, and one such person was on the Citadel right now, and was currently suspended from his job.

He set off for the nearby nightclub, Flux. It was a good place to have a quiet drink, with a small dance floor and a gambling floor, but he wasn’t there for just those three things. He quickly spotted his next recruit. A turian in blue Agent armour nursing a small tumbler of turian brandy. A rather nasty looking scar marred the right side of his face and head. Shepard took a barstool to the left of the turian and ordered himself a tumbler of scotch.

“We meet again, Commander Shepard, or should I call you Agent Shepard now,” said the turian as he sipped at his drink.

“Garrus Vakarian. Haven’t seen you since that mess with the Heretics two years ago. Wasn’t it right here in this bar where I sniped that Destroyer? How far was that shot? 2500 metres?” Shepard mock asked.

Garrus chuckled slightly. “I think it was me who got that one, and it was almost three kilometres away. No way you made that shot!”

A loud breath intruded upon the two rival snipers argument. “I think that the proof is right here,” said a diminutive and rotund volus as a recording played out on two separate holographic screens, one showing Shepard and Vakarian, the other a pair of geth Destroyers with rocket launchers firing and both taking hits to their optics. “Those two were only two kilometres away!” said Flux as he pointed to a duo of badly damaged sniper rifles that were hanging above and behind the bar.

“And we were just about to have fun,” groused Shepard as he took a sip of his scotch.

“I can’t believe you kept those old rifles, Flux,” said Garrus as he eyed the ruined barrels and scopes of the sniper rifles.

Another heavy intake of breath. “Souvenirs!” said Flux as he waddled away to serve another customer.

“So, I heard that you were suspended from C-Sec? Something about roughing up a suspect?” Shepard asked.

Garrus growled under his breath. “Not just a suspect. A damned traitor! Harkin sold us out to Cerberus after he was fired. He used his inside knowledge of C-Sec’s security systems to get their people into key places. I hunted the bastard down in the factory district, that’s how I got this scar,” he pointed to the scar on the right side of his face. “Shotgun blast from a Cerberus Commando. After I caught up with Harkin I interrogated him, harshly. Who knew there were so many pain receptors in the human body.”

“And what happened to the embedded Cerberus agents?”

“We only caught one of them, and only because she was caught erasing Harkin’s files on her compatriots, and the worst part is that almost as soon as we got her into interrogation she died. Cyanide capsule hidden inside a hollow tooth,” said Garrus with an annoyed trill. “The files were completely erased beyond recovery. We’ll probably never find the rest of them.”

“Gotta admire their dedication. Not many humans these days would be hardcore enough to have a suicide pill at the ready,” said Shepard.

“She wasn’t really hardcore. Her implant was remote activated.”

Both military veterans became quiet after that little revelation.

“This might just make this easier for you then. I’m heading up a mission in a few days. It’s a covert op that only a few Alliance senior officers and a few outside specialists know about. I’ve seen your handiwork firsthand and I want you on my squad!” Shepard offered.

“I was suspended, not fired, Shepard. Executor Pallin won’t like it if I quit,” said Garrus as he swirled his little tumbler around. “On the other hand I always love shaking that stick up his butt, and I hate working for C-Sec.” He finished his drink in one gulp. “I’m in! Just tell me where and when!”

Shepard grinned. “Docking bay D-21, the transport ship _Rules of Acquisition_. We leave in 72 hours. I’ve still got a couple more recruits to get. Just so you know, the next one’s a krogan, and with a little luck he’ll be able to bring in a lot more muscle.”

That made Garrus raise his eye-ridges and flap his mandibles slightly. “So long as they’re professionals I don’t foresee any problems, but just so you know, Shepard, I’m sleeping with my pistol under my pillow, with the safety off!”

Shepard gave only a mirthless chuckle. “Fair enough, Garrus, just make sure that if it goes off accidentally it hits the other side of your face.”

Garrus gave a chuckle of his own and left the bar. Shepard decided to kill a few minutes sipping his scotch, only for Flux to slightly ruin his good mood. “Who’s going to pay for that turian brandy?”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed for a second then let out a sigh. “This is definitely coming out of his pay-check!”

Kasumi’s voice whispered in his ear, “I already transferred a substantial amount from his omni-tool account.”

Shepard smirked slyly as he paid Flux.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**Lower Zakera Ward**

**Chora’s Den**

Another hour later he was in yet another nightclub. Chora’s Den. It was known as the seediest nightclub on the Citadel. Loud dance music and dancers in revealing outfits of every known species, primarily asari maidens, were dancing away on the circular dance platform above the bar and the drinks were freely flowing. He breathed in deeply of the heady aroma of several different kinds of alcohol and the various body odours of several species that circulated around the room.

He quickly scoped out a seat at the bar and used his omni-tool to access the rather diverse menu. He quickly made his drink selection, a bottle of scotch for himself and the ladies and Ryncol for his krogan recruit, then moved on to the performers menu. Like most clubs the dancers were actually sex workers by trade, dancing their butts off in the hope of scoring a rich client. He quickly selected two, a young asari maiden for himself and a slightly older one who specialised in servicing krogan.

“She looks cute, I assume the younger one is for you? Why not have me as your escort?” Kasumi asked with a near silent purr in his left ear.

“Because I don’t want him to see you until he’s onboard, and I want you to focus on disabling any surveillance there might be in the VIP section. Fisk is rumoured to be working for the Shadow Broker, and I don’t need that complication.” He turned his head slightly to the left. “I assume that outfit of yours is completely sealed? Krogan have an extremely strong sense of smell.”

She purred into his right ear this time. “Of course.” Her presence quickly left him and soon enough a human woman at the bar, Jenna said her name tag, brought him the bottle he had ordered and no sooner than he had poured himself a couple of fingers worth into one of the three tiny glasses he saw his two ordered beauties. The younger one, named Kesie, had a slim physique with a delicate set of head tentacles, stood roughly 5 foot 5 inches, and had C-cup sized breasts. The older one, Ashiz, had a more voluptuous physique with far larger set of E-cups and a had a strong physique with great muscle definition, standing a good 5 foot 9 inches, and had long sculpted legs. Both were scantily clad in dancers outfits, though Ashiz’s looked slightly looser on her, as if it would come off at the slightest tug.

“Hello sugar, here to have a good time?” Kesie asked as she and Ashiz looped their arms around his and led him over to one of the dancers booths, taking his bottle of scotch with them.

“I was told there was going to be a krogan?!” Ashiz asked.

“He’ll be along shortly. That’s why I asked for young Kesie here,” said Shepard as he caressed her backside, hitting the asari’s sensitive erogenous zones.

“Good, that means my talents won’t go to waste,” said Ashiz as they sat down in the booth where a couple of empty glasses as well as a bottle of Ryncol sat waiting. “Mind if we have some of yours?”

“Sure,” said Shepard with a smile as the two asari opened up his bottle of scotch and poured a couple of fingers worth into their glasses.

“I’ve always liked human scotch,” said Kesie warmly. “Warms you right up.”

Shepard made himself comfortable in the booth and made sure he had a view of both the entrance as well as his two lovelies. The two asari sidled up next to him, both giving him an enticing show as they displayed their half-naked bodies to him.

“So, what is it that you want to see, sugar,” said Kesie, taking the lead quickly.

Shepard quickly took control back by brushing his fingers over Kesie’s pulse point, lightly scratched under her chin and thumbed over her cherry red lips. “You can stay right there and look sexy. Ashiz, how about you dance for us. Show me something with flexibility!” he said with a leer.

Ashiz chuckled as she got up from the small sofa and onto the tabletop which had a thin pole in the centre and once she was on it lit up with neon green and pink spotlights. “My time, your dime, sweetie.” She proceeded to dance.

At first she simply rocked to the music, then slowly but surely she began twirling around the pole as if she were weightless, shaking her breasts and ass in his face as they threatened to spill out of her dress, while Kesie simply sat at his side and caressed him through his uniform. Teasing, but not touching directly his rapidly hardening and twitching erection as he considered keeping the two asari for himself for the night, but reminded himself not to be greedy. Giving his krogan guest sloppy seconds would be a lethal mistake.

Speak of the devil, the krogan had arrived. He was a towering form clad in crimson heavy Mercenary armour who stood two metres tall with his hump, but his head was only slightly higher up than Shepard’s when standing. He had a trio of rather long and cobwebbed scar that ran along the right side of his face, and his blood red eyes spoke of long experience and barely controlled aggression.

He smiled a toothy grin when he saw his potential new client. “Well, well, looks like you started without me. I didn’t expect this from the Lion of Elysium, or maybe I’m talking to the Butcher of Torfan?”

Ashiz and Kesie, and the few who were within earshot, froze at the two titles. “I was dancing for/fondling the Lion of Elysium?!” the two said with wide open eyes and their jaws were on the floor.

“Battle Master Urdnot Wrex. I see your still adding to your collection of scars.” Seeing as they were drawing a little too much attention Shepard nodded towards the VIP section. “Let’s go somewhere a little more private. We have business to discuss!”

Wrex let out a bemused rumble as he followed Shepard who had Kesie on his arm while he snagged Ashiz from her perch on the pole. “I assume this one is for me?” he asked as he set her down beside him.

“I’m all yours, Warlord,” said Ashiz as she moulded herself to Wrex’s bulky form, which made him snicker.

“Oh ho, looks like you choose your pets well, Shepard. You even got me Ryncol,” said Wrex as he took a big swig straight from the bottle. “And not the cheap knockoff stuff!”

They quickly made their way to a private VIP booth. When the door closed behind them they were effectively sealed off from the rest of the club. The human and krogan sat opposite each other on separate couches with a circular table/pole-dance platform between them. Shepard made a show of activating his omni-tool and several previously hidden microphones and cameras sizzled.

Wrex rumbled approvingly. “A little paranoid, but a sensible precaution.”

Shepard smiled back. “I don’t like putting on free shows for blackmailers. I hear Fisk has made a tidy sum playing that card.”

“But he wouldn’t live long if he tried to blackmail you. He’d have me to contend with!” said Wrex as he proceeded to playfully pull Ashiz into his lap. “You don’t mind if I have a little fun first, do you? It’s just been so long since I’ve been able to afford high quality asari.”

Shepard grinned back. “That’s what I paid her for. One of the perks of being a Spectre.”

Wrex’s grin became extremely predatory and feral as he began to shred the poor asari’s outfit with his sharp talons, scaring Kesie enough to make her hug Shepard tightly.

“Don’t worry, your only servicing me,” Shepard whispered into her ear as he began his own little bit of fun. As Wrex popped open his groin plate with a whoosh of pressurized air and let out an impressive thirteen inch long flaccid krogan cock Shepard began to tease Kesie’s erogenous spots, first through her sheer dancer’s outfit, which her rock hard nipples were protruding through, then he worked his right hand underneath her dress to cup her azure, which had soaked her underwear and she was soon panting with need.

Ashiz on the other hand wasn’t as lucky as Wrex put her to work slurping down his still only semi-hard cock. “Yeah, good girl,” he praised. “Get me all nice and ready for your throat.” Vey quickly his cock grew to twenty inches as he smelled Ashiz’s arousal wafting up from her azure. He picked her up in his strong arms and held her by her hips as he lowered her head down onto his erection, feeling her throat stretch tightly around his massive girth as his long muscular tongue began lapping at her wet folds.

Shepard in the meantime had Kesie down on her knees swallowing his own modest seven inch dick. This wasn’t the first, nor the last, time he had an asari going down on his cock and look up at him with loving doe eyes in worship. Something Kasumi couldn’t help comment on.

_“Damn, Shepard,”_ she exclaimed over the radio with a slight pant. _“When you promise a show you certainly deliver. That krogan is a monster. I pity poor Ashiz having that forced down her throat. I’m so thankful for my special modifications I installed in my suit.”_

Shepard’s ears perked up slightly at that, which Kasumi noticed and continued.

_“I installed an inflatable vibrator, similar to the ones in Quarian enviro-suits. It actually grows to be roughly your size, and vibrates at just the right frequency to..to.. oh, oh, oh kami!”_ and her words dissolved at that point into several hard pants and a near silent scream followed.

This triggered Shepard’s own eruption into Kesie’s mouth. Several ropes of cum shot into her mouth and she greedily ate it all up and swallowed. Taking several deep fortifying breaths he affectionately caressed her face then brought her up into his lap and hugged her to him, massaging her breasts as they watched Wrex finish up with Ashiz.

They were rewarded with the slightly comical and very disturbing sight of Wrex shooting his load directly into Ashiz’s mouth. Yellowish white krogan semen erupted from her nose and her overstuffed mouth as she couldn’t contain the vast amount that the quad of testicles produced. Not even slightly winded Wrex pulled Ashiz off his rapidly deflating dick with a comical pop and set her down on the sofa next to him where she flopped down in exhaustion.

Shepard gave Kesie a light slap on her butt. “Go check on your friend!” he ordered and she dutifully began checking her over, starting with making sure she still had a pulse and was still breathing.

 “Now that we’ve both gotten that out of our systems, let’s talk!”

Wrex nodded at Shepard’s business-like tone and cleaned himself up a little with one of the handy towels the booth was stocked with. “What’s the job and what do you need?”

“I need at least five krogan, yourself included, for an important mission. Its high risk and if we are successful your people will sing songs of it in the hollows of Tuchanka, or if we all die we’ll at least be allowed entry into the halls of Valhalla,” said Shepard with a grin, which once more turned stony. “I need them to be veteran Battle Masters, much like yourself. Not immature pups that just got let off their mothers apron strings.”

Wrex grumbled a little. “You’ve told me what you need, but what’s the target!”

“We’re stealing an experimental frigate built by a human supremacist group,” he said succinctly.

Wrex grumbled menacingly. “Cerberus!”

Shepard merely nodded.

“It’ll be expensive, Shepard. Not even a Spectre can afford five Krogan Battle Masters!” said Wrex as he eyed the Ashiz who was beginning to come to.

Shepard grinned back. “The Alliance and the Hierarchy  are footing the bill. How do you think I managed to afford Ashiz over there?”

Wrex mulled that over for a moment. Asari hookers who specialised in krogan were both extremely expensive and few and far between for a damned good reason. In comparison to a krogan female asari are normally just too fragile for him to truly cut loose. He grinned back at Shepard. “Give me a day and I’ll have a number of prime candidates. They’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

Shepard’s grin grew larger. “Excellent. Make sure they’re ready for action within 69 hours. That’s when we leave for our objective.”

Wrex nodded and looked at Ashiz. “How long do I have with her?”

Shepard quickly checked his omni-tool. “Another five and a half hours.”

“Good, ‘cause I see two holes I haven’t explored yet, and unless you want to watch the full show I suggest you give me some privacy,” he said with a rumbling laugh.

Shepard smiled back. “Have fun. Kesie, get dressed.” She nodded back and began to put her dress back on. She spared a look of pity for Ashiz, but got a reassuring smile from her in return.

As they left they heard Wrex snicker as he approached Ashiz who was fully conscious and surprisingly she was on all fours and wore a daring smile. “Ready for round two?”

As the door closed delighted shrieks were heard and the two humans and one asari’s eyes went wide.

“Let’s get out of here!” said Shepard as he moved to leave the VIP section at a fast pace, only for Kesie to stop him.

“Where are you going, sugar? We still have a couple of hours left of our time together. There is more than one private booth,” she said as she held on to his arm and gestured to an empty booth.

Remembering that he paid for a full three hours he smiled and followed her, and sensed another presence follow them in. More specifically a faint crackle of static electricity and a small hand touched his left shoulder. His smile turned into a grin as the door to the booth, more like a small bedroom with a queen sized bed dominating the room with multi-coloured silk wall hangings and what looked suspiciously like a disco-ball hung from the ceiling.

As soon as the door closed the lights dimmed and a trio of black lights lit up. Moments later the disco ball began spinning, casting psychedelic spots of light all over silk draped walls.

_“Very nice. Has a very 1970s vibe,”_ said Kasumi quietly over the radio and Shepard nodded.

Not knowing what he was nodding at Kesie got up on the bed and alluringly began to slowly strip, starting with her soaked panties which she threw in his face. He couldn’t help but inhale her scent which stoked a fire in his own blood as it travelled south. Putting the panties into one of the many pockets on his trousers he began to take off his own clothes, starting with his uniform shirt, then he peeled off his undershirt, exposing his well muscled chest and six pack, and crawled onto the bed.

“How about you help me with these,” he said with a wicked grin as he stood up high on his knees.

She smiled back and proceeded to crawl on her own hands and knees and took the front zipper of his trousers between her teeth and pulled it down, then popped the button open and fished out his rapidly hardening erection. “Looks like I found a treat,” said Kesie as she pulled his foreskin back and began to run her tongue around the head. Unbeknownst to Shepard a tiny pulse of biotic energy pulsed into his cock and almost quicker than he could cope with she instantly had him to full size and he began to feel light headed.

“Whoa,“ exclaimed Shepard as he fell back into the bed and Kesie straddled his hips and moved his erection into position.

With a mad gleam in her eyes she began to lower herself onto him. “Now to mount the lion!” she gasped as she settled herself. Taking a moment to get used to his size she soon enough began rocking up and down on him, breaking him out of his trance.

He soon noticed a slight electric discharge, which quickly resolved into a smiling Kasumi. Seeking to distract Kesie for a few more moments he put his hands on her tits and began teasing her nipples, making her gasp as she came. At the same time Kasumi had discarded her skin tight light armour and now stood in only what appeared to be pair of leather and string panties. Her pale-white skin was without blemish and she had a dancer’s physique with B-cup breasts that sat high on her chest.

With a sigh Kasumi unbuttoned the front flap of her panties and gently pulled it away from her sex, revealing it to be the base for her inflatable vibrating dildo. It was roughly the same size as Shepard’s, but was a coloured a deep purple. She buttoned up her panties again, but this time the dildo was pointing outward and she crawled forward until she was behind Kesie. She gripped Kesie’s hips firmly and lined up with. the asari’s ass.

Kesie only had enough time to look back as she felt the foreign hands grip and caress her hips and butt before she felt something wet probe her rear entrance.

“Surprise!” exclaimed Kasumi as she lunged forward and buried herself in one stroke up Kesie’s ass. Kesie could only let out a silent scream at the unexpected intrusion and instinctively reached out and melded with both Kasumi and Shepard, linking their nervous systems together and made each of them feel every sensation, both pain and pleasure.

“This is going to cost you extra,” said Kesie as the first wave of shared orgasms passed between them, to which both Kasumi and Shepard grinned.

“Asari make the greatest toys,” said Kasumi as she settled into a rhythm, feeling the sensation of her own dildo going up Kesie’s/her ass and Shepard’s cock going into Kesie’s/her pussy and the sensations from Shepard’s cock, which Kesie also got the full brunt of. Each orgasm they each had triggered a sympathetic release which built on top of one another until it finally approached a crescendo and Kesie abruptly released them from the meld, causing Kesie and Kasumi to collapse on either side of Shepard.

After taking a few moments to recover Kasumi asked a burning question. “I thought asari could only meld with one being at a time?”

Kesie panted for a few moments. “It happens sometimes, though only rarely and only with compatible partners. It never happens between asari only couplings.”

“We’re definitely going to have to do that again sometime.” Kesie winced at the human female’s comment.

“Not until you pay me for my services. Our deal was for entertaining only him. Besides you two have made me too sore!” said Kesie as she reached for a nearby cabinet and retrieved a small glass jar with asari script on the front. She scooped out a healthy amount of its contents and began rubbing down her azure and ass.

Kasumi smirked as she crawled up on Shepard. “I still feel all tingly from the two of you and I bet soldier boy here has more than enough in his balls,” she purred as she ran her tongue up and down his throat and her hand snaked down to cup his balls, feeling their weight in her hands. Shepard put his hands on Kasumi’s neck, lightly squeezing it, making her eyes widen in excitement at being in the Spectre’s grasp.

With a twist of his hips Shepard had Kasumi on her back, smiling like a wolf as he squeezed a little tighter, making her gasp as less blood travelled to her brain. Kasumi continued stroking his balls and shaft, but seconds later began to fumble, her grip weakened and Shepard let up on the pressure. She felt the rush of oxygen rich blood flood back into her brain and gasped as her pussy contracted around nothing but air. Her eyes pleaded and Shepard obliged by ramming his cock deep inside her, feeling her tight pussy grip him like a vice and gush white hot juices.

No words were said as the two of them continued their primal joining. Using his thumbs he gently squeezed her neck again, waves of euphoria washed over Kasumi as Shepard continued to ram into her. She wrapped her legs around him, hooking them together as she bore down and milked his cock inside her, smiling back in ecstasy as multiple orgasms passed through her in time with Shepard’s squeezing of her neck.

With a bass growl Shepard finally let go of whatever restraint he had and quickened his thrusts as he let go of her neck, his hands and mouth travelled down to her succulent breasts, suckling on her right nipple while massaging her left breast for a few seconds before alternating. Kasumi yelped in time with his thrusts, spurring him on and angled her body just so he could get deeper inside her, until he pushed passed into her deepest depths. Kasumi grabbed his head in a deep tongue filled kiss and Shepard came at last, shooting deep inside her which set off another round of roiling orgasms through the small woman.

Kasumi looked back with a grin at Kesie as she let the afterglow settle in. “Enjoy the show?” she asked panting.

Kesie grinned back. “Every second of it,” said Kesie as she crawled forward and kissed Kasumi’s tattooed lips. “Let’s have some more fun.” She placed her hands on Kasumi’s face and uttered the customary words. “Embrace eternity.” With those words she melded with Kasumi, delving into her memories of her recent bout with Shepard, making her relive the whole event. Every muscle spasm, every tingle, every thunderous orgasm, and delved deeper, using Kasumi’s heightened arousal as a vehicle to probe deeper into her mind, but felt a massive mental vault door slam into place and in the physical realm Kasumi tore Kesie’s hands from her face, breaking the meld.

“Contrary to popular belief not all humans are mentally weak!” Kasumi used both her strong legs to push Kesie off of the bed. The asari whore landed hard on the floor flat on her back, just as the timer on her omni-tool sounded.

“I believe our time is up,” said Kesie as she got back on her feet. “Now pay up!”

Kasumi smirked at her asari counterpart. “I believe me and Shepard repaid you enough with that meld,” she said as she slowly began to put her clothes and light armour back on, and Shepard began to do the same. Suddenly Kasumi drew a short wakizashi and levelled its cutting edge with Kesie’s neck. “If you tell anyone about anything you saw during our meld or describe to anyone how I look I’ll gladly hunt you down and remove your head. Is that clear?”

“You can’t threaten me! There is a Spectre not three feet away from you?!” said Kesie in a near panic.

“Better she did it than I. I’d make your death last. Everything a Spectre says, does and touches is classified, and she is a very close associate of mine. I suggest you forget everything about her!” said Shepard as he rested his hand on the butt of his gun and levelled an even stare at her.

Kesie nodded as she clutched at the bed sheets and held them up to her chin. As soon as the two humans were dressed they left and she breathed a sigh of relief. She looked underneath the bed and fished out a small recording device. She activated it and nothing happened. She quickly pried open the casing and found the internal circuitry had been fried.

Her beautiful face twisted into a scowl for a second and she threw the recorder into a wall. “Damn that human whore!”

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**Citadel Docks: Docking Bay D-21**

**48 hours later**

Wrex and his four krogan, all battle hardened Battle Masters and close to his own age and experience, though one was far older him, walked onto the docks carrying travel bags and a large cargo pallet followed them, driven by a salarian who was barely stopping himself from shaking like a leaf, much to the krogans amusement.

“Ten credits say that the salarian driving our cargo pallet wets himself when I pull my shotgun out,” said the one closest to Wrex.

“No bet, Wreav. I can already smell the little pyjak’s piss!” he said loudly and the other krogan let out bellowing laughs at Wreav, who grumbled at his brood-bother’s barb and the laughter it caused in his fellow krogan.

They soon came upon a number of humans in Alliance Navy uniforms who were working on loading several crates onto the ship, a Kowloon-class freighter with the name _Rules of Acquisition_ being painted over. An older human male with salt and pepper hair and wearing a brown leather jacket scowled at what the paint drones were doing. The thundering steps of five pairs of heavy armoured boots alerted him to the new arrivals.

“Well, well, looks like my son’s final recruits have finally arrived,” he said to the surprise of Wrex.

“Your son? You mean you’re the father of Commander Shepard?” he asked.

“Of course he is. Don’t you see the family resemblance?” said the flanging tone of a turian. Instantly all five krogan were on guard, and Wreav even went for the dagger in his boot. The turian merely stared the angry krogan down. “Garrus Vakarian, formerly of C-Sec,” he said calmly, as if staring down a band of krogan was an everyday occurrence.

Wrex immediately put his hand on Wreav’s left shoulder. “Easy there, Wreav. This must be one of the specialists that Shepard recruited for this mission.” He looked over Garrus’ equipment.

He wore heavy Colossus armour with a modified Kuwashii visor that wrapped around the left side of his face with holographic HUD covering his left eye, and he was wearing a damnable turian smirk, which just made Wreav madder.

“This turian is really asking for it,” Wreav growled menacingly, only to receive a vicious head butt from Wrex.

“Watch your temper, Wreav. This mission is risky enough without killing our own team mates, even if they are turian,” said Wrex in annoyance and to the slight chuckle of all the other krogan and a human that was approaching from not too far away.

“I see your just as good at doling out discipline as well as you fight,” said Commander Shepard as he made his way from the freighters boarding tube, followed by a human female in black light armour.

“A good show of force is the best way to handle unruly krogan. Especially if they are your brood brother, haha,” said Wrex to Shepard’s amusement.

“John, are you sure that painting over the _Rules_ name is necessary?” Shepard’s father asked.

“Sorry dad, but if we want to maintain the illusion the paintjob is necessary,” said Shepard as he rested his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Where are my manners? Wrex, this is my father, Michael Shepard, the captain of our Trojan Horse, the _MSV Rules of Acquisition_.”

“Trojan Horse?” Garrus asked.

“Look it up on the extranet, you’ll find it under Greek myth,” said the young lady with a bubbly smile.

“And this is Kasumi, another tech and stealth specialist for the mission,” said Commander Shepard.

Wrex sniffed the air slightly and smirked a little at her. “Well Shepard, it seems you have a very broad palette, for a human.”

Shepard returned the smirk with a grin. “I’m sure you appreciate the value of a beautiful female.”

“Ha, ha. Females certainly are the finest things in life,” said Wrex wistfully, and the krogan he brought with him nodded, except for Wreav who growled lowly at his brood brother.

This earned him another knock on the head, this time from the eldest krogan in the group. “Settle down, whelp!”

The rest of the krogan rumbled in agreement and the humans within earshot and Garrus nodded.

“Wreav, you get to carry our gear onboard,” said Wrex as he tossed his pack in Wreav’s arms, which began a tsunami of heavy packs that his strong but short arms had trouble handling. Wreav grumbled, but moved onto the ship with two of the krogan went with him, while Wrex and elder krogan stayed behind.

Shepard’s face turned stony. “Is that krogan going to be a problem?”

Wrex cocked his head in thought. “Possibly. My brood-brother is a staunch traditionalist. Wreav and I share the same mother, but nothing else. This old fart here is Okeer. He knows more about cyber warfare than any other krogan I know, plus he is an expert on krogan biology, so he can double as our medic.”

Okeer merely snorted. “I’m not only ‘an’ expert, I’m ‘the’ expert on krogan biology. I also dabble in xeno-biology. I’ve kept up as much as I can with the asari medical journals, which includes journals about human biology.”

“Good. We can use another medic and hacker. Let’s get aboard the _Rules_ so we can begin the briefing,” concluded Shepard.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

AN: This was inspired by boldfullmetal’s “The Pirate King”, Firefly and Guardians of the Galaxy. 


	2. Ch2 Grand Theft Starship

** Shiver ME Relays**

Whoever can surprise well must conquer!

John Paul Jones

 

**Ch.2 Grand Theft Starship**

**MSV Rules of Acquisition**

On the small bridge of the _Rules_ Captain Michael Shepard stared out through the small holographic image of his son's commando team’s destination on the holo-tank. A large space station which orbited a nameless gas giant in an equally nameless star system in the Hour Glass Nebula. It amazed the Alliance Navy reservist what resources Cerberus was able to call upon. To be able to build such a large facility in the middle of nowhere and practically underneath the Citadel races collective noses.

His comm. specialist got his attention. “They’ve queried us, sir.”

Captain Shepard nodded. “Transmit the recording, and make sure that it’s distorted enough to make it sound like we have a bad transmitter.”

The comm. specialist nodded and the transmission began. _“Clearance Code: 4, 7, Alpha, Tango. Cerberus Kowloon-class transport_ Helena _carrying supplies for Minuteman Station,”_  said a recording of a tired sounding Cerberus Captain, and Captain Shepard couldn’t help but shudder.

“Now comes the moment of truth,” the Captain mused to himself as several tense moments began to pass. “Helm, maintain a slow approach and keep you hand on the FTL accelerator. If you hear their weapons locking on to us...”

“I’ll get us out of here before they can even blink!” replied the helmsman as he tensed slightly.

Thirty tense seconds later a reply came. _“Clearance code verified. We’ve been eagerly anticipating your arrival,_ Helena _. You are cleared to dock in bay 02.”_

Everyone breathed a great sigh of relief. “That was just the easy part. Do I want to know how you got that Cerberus captain to say that?” Captain Shepard asked his son John who was wearing a distinctly different form of dress than normal. A set of “liberated” Cerberus Assault Armour in full colours, black and white with gold trim and the cursed emblem.

“Probably not. SpecOps is not for the faint hearted,” said Commander John Shepard as he shifted slightly in the heavy armour. It had been adjusted for him by the Alliance armoury team on the Citadel, but it still didn’t feel right. “I just know that I’ll only be comfortable once I’m back in my regular armour, or I get this thing repainted.”

Captain Shepard chuckled slightly at his son’s discomfort, but soon he was beginning to feel his own discomfort rise as his ship began approaching one of Minuteman Station’s many cavernous docking bays. He keyed the ship’s intercom. “All hands, we’re five minutes away from docking. Action Stations!” At that an alarm sounded. Alliance marines began to take up their positions within the _Rules_ corridors and loading bays. “You’d better get down to the forward loading bay. Your team’s waiting for you. I just hope that the moles you have inside the base have done their jobs.”

John merely smirked. “Don’t worry. One is consummate professional, and the other is highly motivated. Trust me dad.”

Captain Shepard snorted at his son’s assertion. “No plan survives contact with the enemy, Johnny,” he fired back as John left the bridge who growled back, “Don’t call me...” just before the doors slammed shut in his face.

A rumbling laugh sounded throughout the bridge from the back. “Seems like at least one thing is universal, no matter the species. Parents can always wind up their kids,” said Okeer between laughs before he looked back to his console.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**Minuteman Station**

**Operations Centre**

In the operations centre of the large space station it was all business as usual. It was a quiet and peaceful morning and Alpha shift was only half way through when a beautiful woman with raven black hair entered. She wore a personalized Cerberus uniform which showed off her natural curves and a generous set of D-cup sized breasts, she looked more like a fashion model than a serious director. While most of the woman on base would kill to have a body like hers, her eyes however conveyed only the frigidness of a harsh taskmistress who expected only the best from her people.

“Status report!” she demanded.

The officer on duty, a balding middle aged man who was barely keeping his eyes above her neckline, replied, “All is normal, Director Lawson. The supply ship _Helena_ has finally arrived. We just cleared it to dock.”

Lawson’s heart soared, but she kept her frosty exterior and added a little extra. “Very good Wilson. I’ll be down in the SR-2 dock if you need me, but don’t call me, unless it’s something critical!”

Not even waiting for Wilson’s acknowledgement she turned on her heel and walked out of the Operations Centre. As soon as she cleared the armoured doors and out of sight of the two armed guards guarding the entrance she activated her omni-tool and activated an encrypted chat line.

MLaw: All units, Condition Kobiyashi Maru! Acknowledge?”

JT: Acknowledged, all units will be informed.

KDon: Time to kick TIM right in the daddy bagsJ

GabD: Cool it Kenneth! My team is ready ma’am.

Miranda closed down her omni-tool and continued on to the dry-dock in the lower levels. All cool and collected, but with a slight spring in her step which a dark skinned Hope Lilium who was passing by her noticed.

“What’s gotten the ice-queen so happy?” she mused as she began to follow.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**MSV Rules of Acquisition**

Shepard waited patiently as the ship entered the docking bay. Behind him were several crates where his assault team was waiting for the signal. The krogan were all grumbling with impatience and most of the marines were very intimidated, except for one.

“Stay cool big guy. In just another few minutes we’ll be cracking some Cerberus heads,” said a smirking Lieutenant James Vega, a recent N6 graduate who was up for selection into the N7 program, though he didn’t know that yet.

Wrex grumbled a little more before he settled into doing one final check on his weapons. The first was a massive krogan shotgun called the Graal Spike Thrower. It was used primarily for hunting thresher maws, and Vega didn’t want to think what such a weapon could do to a human. Wrex then placed it back on the magnetic strip on his back and began checking over his light machinegun, an M-76 Revenant. The result was he became much calmer.

Meanwhile Garrus had taken up a sniper’s perch on top of a large crate and hidden behind a pair of smaller crates with a small gap in between them and laid down on his belly, priming his M-97 Viper sniper rifle. He quietly chuckled to himself over the krogans impatience.

“Hey Shepard, bet I can get more kills than you!” said Garrus

Shepard chuckled back. “Dream on, Vakarian.”

“Everyone knows I’m the one who’s going to be the one who gets the most kills!” rumbled Wrex as he finished checking over his Revenant and replaced it with his Graal.

“Maybe the bloodiest kills,” Garrus conceded. “I’ve seen what flechette rounds do to people. Not a pretty sight.”

“Ha, ha. Afraid of a little friendly fire?” Wrex asked.

“Not from you, but maybe your brother Wreav. On the other hand he will have to worry about return fire since my shields will at least protect me from at least one shot from that beast.”

Wreav growled at the turian’s remark. “Mark my words, Wrex. After this job is done I’m hunting that turian bastard down!”

Wrex only chuckled at his brood-brother’s words. “If you can. I’ll be surprised and a little disappointed if he isn’t able to kill you if you try.”

Beside Shepard stood a currently uncloaked Kasumi who was giggling a little at the boys smack talk. “I don’t think I’ve ever been surrounded by so much testosterone.”

Shepard smirked back, but then became serious. “Remember the plan Kasumi. You go in cloaked and infiltrate the station. Get into their server room and download all of their databases then wipe the local copy and set our little surprise.”

“Don’t worry Shepard, this isn’t my first time,” she chirped back before a slight shudder went through the ship as it landed. As soon as the ramp began to lower she engaged her tactical cloak and disappeared from sight.

As soon as the ramp was down Shepard trooped out into the docking bay and surveyed it. There were a large number of crates of various sizes. Plenty of cover for his team. Soon enough he was quickly met by the bay’s dock master, a middle aged human with a ridiculously large moustache which gave him the appearance of a walrus, and two security guards in light armour could be seen by the main entrance into the station proper. His beady eyes narrowed as he took in Shepard’s appearance.

“Why are you in full assault armour?” the walrus asked as he rested his left hand on his own pistol, an M-3 Predator.

“Had a little trouble with some batarian slavers looking for a quick score not long after we left the Mass Relay. Since then myself and my crew have been in full armour, just in case,” said Shepard with an unseen grin behind the dark tinted visor of his helmet and a slightly distorted voice. He checked his HUD’s radar and saw that there were only a few dock workers besides the dock master and guards.

The walrus snorted. “Bloody slavers.” He activated his omni-tool and brought up a large manifest. “Well, you’re safe enough here, but let’s get your cargo offloaded quickly. The Cell’s director here has been anxiously waiting for this shipment.”

“I know. The head office got a little bit short with me when I was delayed at Illium, some sort of accident with a volus cargo ship’s drive core. Grounded me for three days, and as a result I had to push my ship’s engines pretty hard,” said Shepard with a quick eye movement he deactivated his helmet’s external speakers and activated a private channel. “Hurry up Okeer, I don’t know how long I can stall these guys.”

_“Keep your seals on, boy, just thirty more seconds. Cerberus didn’t skimp on security,”_ came Okeer’s rumbling voice over the radio.

Another eye flick and his helmet’s speakers were back on. “I’ll need your signature on this,” said Shepard as he presented a pad and pen to the dock master.

The walrus snorted at that, which made his moustache twitch wildly. “More paperwork?”

Shepard merely shrugged. “I just transport the cargo. The head office wants everything done to the letter.”

With a growl that reminded Shepard of an annoyed krogan the walrus plucked the pad and pen out of Shepard’s hands and began signing the various places the form required, which seemed to double every time he thought he had completed it.

_“Just five more seconds,”_ said Okeer, just as the walrus’s patience finally came to an end.

“What the hell kind of form is this?” he said as he pushed it back in Shepard’s hands. “You’re not Cerberus. You’re stalling!”  he exclaimed.

_“I’m in!”_

Suddenly the cargo bay went pitch black. “Sorry about this.” Shepard’s helmet HUD instantly went to night vision and he drew his pair of M-6s from the quick-draw-holsters on his hips and shot the walrus in the head, blasting a big hole in his forehead and an even bigger one out the back before he dove for cover.

The flash of the gunshot instantly got the two guards attention, but one got impaled through the gut with a flechette round and was stuck firmly to the wall while the other got a sniper round through his skull before they could react. Out from the transport four krogan and twenty four marines came bounding down the ramp shooting at anything that moved. Within moments the bay was secured. They had their beachhead. 

Seconds later Vega came running up with the rest of Shepard’s weaponry, a modified M-96 Mattock and an N7 Crusader. “Good to have these back,” said Shepard as he quickly put his M-6s back in their holsters and put the folded up Mattock on his back and unfolded the Crusader. “Fan out and shoot every single Cerberus goon you find, except those with red SR-2 crests on their left upper arms, is that understood?”

“Sir, yes sir,” replied the marines.

“Yeah, yeah, we remember the briefing!” grumbled Wrex as he fired another blast from his Graal that sliced through a trooper and impaled itself into an unlucky Centurion who collapsed in a heap, horrifying the Cerberus defence squad that just entered the bay. One of the marines lobbed a frag grenade into the survivors midst which moments later detonated and threw the enemy squad around like rag dolls.

“Forward!” yelled Shepard as he let off a couple of rounds from his Crusader as he bounded down the hallway and into the station proper. His new ride was waiting for him.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**Primary Server Room**

With practiced ease Kasumi had stealthily navigated the maze of corridors and was now in a massive room that served as the home for the station’s server farm.

“Impressive,” she said with a smirk as she now understood why she was lugging around a ten kilo pack full of C12 plastic explosives. She quickly found a working console connected directly to the servers and made a connection through her omni-tool to the _Rules_ own massive server farm module, a recently installed and temporary addition to the Shepard family’s mobile home.

_I hope there’s enough storage space for all this data,_ she thought to herself as she began the download and automatic deletion. She made sure the connection was stable before she began setting the explosives around the servers, and cloaked herself just in case someone noticed the download and came to investigate, though with any luck Okeer was keeping Cerberus blind, deaf and stupid.

Suddenly a loud bang and brilliant flash erupted from the server room’s entrance. Someone had triggered the laser tripwire she had wired to a flashbang grenade.

“Kuso,” she exclaimed as she remembered the Murphy’s Law. Cerberus had reacted faster than she expected.

She ran as fast and as quietly as she could to speed up the dissemination of her party favours, placing them in as difficult to see and reach places as she could. She thanked kami that her graybox implant granted her night vision since the place was now pitch black and her pursuers were now on alert and wearing helmets with night vision functions as well, though that wouldn’t help against her cloak.

As soon as the last charge was laid she doubled back towards the door, which had a pair of troopers alert and ready for anything. She smiled as she drew her twin wakizashi short swords from their sheaths mounted to the small of her back.

The two troopers left to guard the door were on alert for anything, but all they heard was the quick swish of the two blades cutting through the air and through the soft neck joint in their armour, slicing cleanly through their jugulars, throats and spines before they sliced all the way out the back, and her cloak disengaged from the fast motion she just performed and watched with cool detachment as their heads fell with blood spurting out of their necks as their hearts pumped for a few more seconds.

Her omni-tool alerted her that the download was complete and she started running down the corridors away from the server room as fast as her nimble legs could carry her. When she felt relatively safe she keyed in a single command on her omni-tool.

“Fire in the hole!” she warned on the assault team’s general frequency, and three seconds later several C12 powered explosions tore apart server room and shook the entire station.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**SR-2 Dock**

Director Lawson and several techs and Cerberus Commandoes had made their way to the dock. The prototype frigate was almost finished and certainly space worthy, but a lot of the interior spaces still needed to be finished. Only a week ago had the drive core been tested to full power and had worked beyond anyone’s expectations. The ship’s improved stealth had also been tested and found to be able to hide the ship’s signature emissions when exiting FTL.

She smiled at the memory of her success after Minuteman Cell’s years of failure to reproduce and improve upon the Normandy-class as she began organizing the squads of troopers that had converged on the dry dock.

“All troopers, I want all of you in defensive positions around all the main and secondary points of access. Keep the Alliance out of here at all costs.” At that moment the station shook as if it had been hit by a dreadnought round. The little thief’s handiwork she suspected. “What the hell was that?” she demanded.

_“Director Lawson, this is Wilson. The primary server room just got taken out. We’ve already switched to the backups, but we’ve been infiltrated and several squads of marines backed up by krogan mercs are heading for the Operations Centre,”_ her frantic subordinate reported as gunfire could be heard in the background.

“Alright Wilson, set the station’s self destruct then begin the evacuation. The station’s lost to us now,” she said with a bitter tone, though on the inside she was elated.

_“What about the prototype? The Illusive Man isn’t going to like it that we lost his latest favourite toy,”_ said Wilson with a slight quiver in his voice, and Miranda revelled in the little toady’s fear.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got most of the design and construction team onboard the SR-2, and she’s fully space worthy. We’ll use it as our escape vehicle, assuming we can get the doors open. If not, well at least we’ll make sure it doesn’t fall into the Alliance’s hands,” said Miranda as she cut transmission.

“You’re not going to leave without me, are you?” asked a cultured woman’s voice with a British accent from behind her. The former director of the Minuteman Cell could prove to be the main wrinkle in Miranda’s plan.

“Of course not Miss Lilium. I assume you’ve been keeping up with your combat training?” she said as she turned to face her fellow operative who was wearing a black with gold trim Cerberus cat suit, much like her own white and black she used to wear.

Miss Lilium smiled as she brought up a shotgun, an M-22 Eviscerator, from behind her back and with a few flicks of her fingers she showed her combat tech was ready for deployment. “I’m always prepared!”

Miranda nodded and set off for the Normandy, with Miss Lilium following right behind her. They quickly entered through the primary airlock and turned left towards the bridge. “Hawthorne, what’s our status?” she asked the pilot, a younger man in his mid-twenties.

“Drive Core seems to be purring like a kitten and main thrusters are in standby mode and manoeuvring thrusters are set to idle at the moment, plus we also have a pair of Javelin torpedoes aboard, so if the techs can’t get the doors open we can blast our way out,” he reported.

“The ship is armed?” Miss Lilium exclaimed. “I thought the SR-2s weapons were scheduled to be installed and tested a week from now?”

“The launchers were installed yesterday, and we picked up a few torpedoes from the armoury in the fighter bay when this started,” said Hawthorne nervously. Former Director Lilium wasn’t part of the escape plan.

Lilium’s eyes narrowed as she rested her hands on her shotgun and surreptitiously unfolded it. “What are you talking about? This ship was my project before Lawson took over, and I know for a fact that torpedoes from a fighter won’t fit into the Javelin launchers on this ship, so what’s going on?” she demanded as she pressed the muzzle of her shotgun up against the back of Miranda’s skull.

Though her heart was going a mile a second she was outwardly calm and composed. “I ordered the installation of the launchers a week ago, just after the Drive Core and stealth tests. We were going to do another stealth test with the launchers tomorrow, as well as test launch a few torpedoes, so I had a few Javelin’s moved to the nearby armoury. Now put that weapon down!”

She heard Lilium flick the safety of her shotgun off. “Don’t lie to me! I don’t have the full picture yet, but I still have one more important piece of the puzzle left to figure out. What is ‘Condition Kobiyashi Maru’?”

An interesting reflection in the forward viewport caused Miranda to smile. “How much do you know about 20th century science fiction?”

Out of all the replies Lilium expected, this wasn’t one of them. “What?”

“Then I assume that you are unfamiliar with Star Trek?” Miranda queried as her smile deepened.

“Heard of it, yes, but never saw any of it. What does that have to do with this?” Lilium demanded as she pushed the barrel of her shotgun deeper into Miranda’s neck.

“Everything!” she replied as Hope Lilium’s world suddenly went black.

As soon as the pressure was off her neck Miranda elegantly turned on her heel and saw who had saved her. “Thank you Miss Chambers,” she purred as she saw the blushing petite red head standing over Lilium with a Predator pistol in her hand.

Kelly merely shrugged. “I may be a sweet girl most of the time, but I’ve always wanted to do that. That arrogant little bitch was always lying about herself in our sessions. She’s Cerberus to the core!”

Miranda nodded at Kelly’s observation. “Goldstein, Patel, take Miss Lilium down to the port cargo hold and strip search her, and don’t use omni-cuffs. She’s an expert hacker.”

Both female crewmembers nodded with big grins on their faces as they began dragging the hated former Minuteman Cell’s Director into the main lift. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m sure there are some cargo straps in the hold,” said Goldstein.

“Mind if I join them? In addition to my psychology degree Cerberus also trained me in interrogation techniques,” said Kelly with a big grin and barely kept herself from rubbing her hands together.

Miranda thought it over for a moment. “Very well, just make sure she’s sedated while she’s being stripped!”

“Got it,” chirped Kelly as she followed after the duo with their prisoner down the portside stairwell. Another design oversight Miranda had corrected. It used to be that the central lift and the service crawlspaces were the only way up or down the ship. Now between the second and fourth decks there was a circular staircase for ease of movement between decks.

Miranda then turned her attention to another tech who was sitting in the chair next to Hawthorn. “Hadley, how did the installation of the GARDIAN lasers go?”

The tech smiled back. “They went in smoothly. Just a word of warning though, they haven’t been tested yet and are not properly calibrated.”

“And the targeting systems?”

This made Hadley fidget a little. “Well, the sensors are installed, but as I said the system hasn’t been calibrated. We may be able to hit the broadside of a barn, but definitely not a moving target.”

This made Miranda’s eyes tighten. “Very well. Luckily the plan only requires that the ship is space worthy. Keep working!” she ordered as she turned back and headed towards CIC proper.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**Just outside SR-2 Dock**

The staccato of rapid fire assault rifles and booms of shotguns reverberated throughout the corridors as Shepard and his core team, Garrus, Wrex and Vega, fought their way to their destination. All along the corridor several removable armoured panels had been popped open and used by the Cerberus troopers as cover, slowing down their progress.

“I’m getting real sick of those damned panels!” said Vega as he pumped a couple of rounds from his Piranha shotgun into a trooper who instantly caught fire and panicked, jumping straight into Shepard’s field of fire who ended the poor bastard’s life with a Crusader’s heavy slug to the brain.

Shepard snorted at the lieutenant’s irritation. “They may be annoying, but they’re also useful for us as well,” he said as he slid behind one of the panels, only for it to lower back into the floor. “Or not.” In reflex he fired off several shots from his shotgun, blasting several enemy troopers off their feet with massive holes in their chests. One of them had his omni-tool active. A few more troopers tried to take advantage of his weakness, only to be cut down by a laughing Wrex with his Revenant.

“Ha, ha, ha. You always end up in the most interesting situations, and as usual I have to pull your ass out of the fire,” said Wrex as he suppressed the incoming enemy troops.

“That’s the second time that’s happened today,” Shepard growled as he picked himself up and switched to his Mattock and toggled the weapon’s setting, auto-fire with incendiary rounds.

The loud boom of a sniper rifle interrupted all conversation as an armour piercing round sliced through first a pair of troopers before hitting a centurion in the head, causing it to explode in a storm of blood, skull fragments and grey matter. “Scoped and dropped,” Garrus crowed.

“Nice shot,” said Vega as he blasted the last trooper in the corridor.

Garrus caressed his weapon. “I love this rifle.”

Shepard consulted his omni-tool. “We’re not far from our primary objective. If our moles have done their jobs right every door between us and the dock should be unlocked and every route elsewhere except the Operations Centre should be sealed off. We’ll only have to deal with what few Cerberus loyalists we find in the hangar.”

Vega whistled. “Damn Commander, where did you find this people?”

Vega could hear the smirk underneath the commander’s helmet. “It’s amazing what you can pick up in a bar on Ilium.”

They moved on at a fast march pace. The corridors were all the same and only the bulkhead ID numbers told you where you were if you had a map, which Shepard periodically checked on his omni-tool which was synced up to his suit’s combat radar. He was now glad for the soldier augmentations he had gotten as part of the basic Alliance genetic augmentation package. If he had been anything else he was sure he’d be exhausted wearing this heavy armour.

They soon came upon a large door guarded by a couple squads worth of Cerberus troopers, guardians and led by a pair of centurions.

“Incoming!” one of the troopers called out and everyone ducked for cover followed by a massive barrage of rifle and sub-machinegun fire. Several grenades were thrown at the assault team, only for Wrex to grin as he caught a few that were heading for Shepard and Vega, while letting a few of them land near himself and Garrus.

“Ha, ha, free party favours,” crowed Wrex as he threw the grenades back, just before the ones that landed at his feet detonated and the shrapnel and pressure waves washed over him, while the grenades he threw back caused total chaos in the enemy ranks.

Meanwhile Garrus had thrown himself bodily away from the grenades that landed in front of him, dropping his sniper rifle in the process while he barely got away from the kill zone. He growled to himself as he drew his assault rifle, an M-15 Vindicator, and started coolly executing tight groupings of headshots.

“That. Was. A. Very. Good. Rifle!” said Garrus between each burst and six troopers either lost their shields or heads.

As the dust settled it revealed a still grinning Wrex with a fully deployed biotic barrier enhancing his shields as he raised his Revenant LMG. “My turn.” The LMG spat out a torrent of bullets, catching out the remaining troopers and forced the two centurions to take cover, while the guardians were pushed back from the sheer mass of fire impacting their heavy combat shield.

They were now at a rough stalemate as the krogan, turian and two humans relentlessly poured heavy fire on the centurions and three surviving guardians.

“We need to break this stalemate!” said Vega through his radio, the cacophony of weapons fire would drown out anything he said through his helmet’s voice module.

“Agreed. Grenades?” Shepard asked.

Vega grinned. “Nope, something a little more fun.” He stepped out of cover and launched a massive red projectile from his shotgun, a Carnage shot. It impacted heavily with one of the guardian’s shields and cracked it slightly. Seeing this Shepard opened up with his Mattock on full auto and emptied the full thirty six rounds in his clip into the shield and it failed spectacularly as it cracked open and the last three bullets tore through the guardian’s chest armour and fell dead.

Shepard and Vega stepped back into cover as the two remaining guardians opened fire with what looked to be small shotguns that began to pepper the corridor. Garrus tried to snipe one of them through the mail slot, but the burst fire mode of the Vindicator made it difficult to get an accurate shot so he stepped back into cover as well. He then reset the rifle to single shot and tried again. This time he was rewarded with a collapsing guardian with a newly ventilated head. “Head shot!” he crowed.

Shepard then tossed a grenade behind the centurions which drained their shields and pushed them out of cover. He quickly dispatched the two of them with rifle fire while he unleashed a concussive round on the final guardian. The heavy weight of the shield plus the heavy concussive round combined to bowl over the hapless guardian and before he could recover Wrex fired a warp field at him which tore his armour apart and mangled his chest beyond recognition.

Silence reigned for a few seconds before a faint crackle of static sounded. “Wow, talk about overkill,” said a newly revealed Kasumi as she stepped forward to examine the mangled corpse of the last guardian.

Wrex merely grinned. “Nothing like a good old fashioned warp field to ruin a Cerberus goon’s day, ha, ha, ha!”

Kasumi gulped at the krogan’s bloodthirstiness. “I’ve managed to access the internal security cameras,” she said as she brought up a large holographic screen. It showed a rather large force of Cerberus commandoes, troopers and two new types of Cerberus soldiers in light armour, both were made up of only women, in a large hangar bay.

“Those are new. Have you identified them?” Shepard asked.

Kasumi nodded. “The ones with the sniper rifles are codenamed Nemesis while the ones with the swords are called Phantoms. The Nemeses purpose is pretty clear, but watch the Phantoms carefully.” She zoomed in on one of them and a few seconds later it vanished with a similar wave of electrical distortion as Kasumi’s tactical cloak.

“That looks suspiciously familiar,” said Shepard.

Kasumi’s eyes became slits. “Yes. They stole the tech from my family. I may not practice all of our arts, but that tech is the property of my late grandfather. Only my clan is supposed to have that tech!” she explained.

“Asari have similar tech for their huntresses, maybe Cerberus stole it from them,” said Wrex as he shrugged. “Either way they’re going to be a pain in the ass.”

Shepard smirked. “Then let’s give them a surprise of their own. Vega, ready that grenade launcher of yours.”

Vega nodded as he brought the heavy weapon to bear on the door. “Ready!”

“Stack up!” Shepard ordered as his small team took cover on either side of the door while Vega found a piece of surviving defilade in front of the door and hunkered down. Kasumi stood ready by the door controls.

“Hit it!”

Kasumi did just that, turning the red hologram to green and the door opened with a heavy groan of gears turning. Almost instantly Kasumi’s swords flashed and a scream elicited from a rapidly uncloaking Phantom whom had lost her sword arm and was writhing in pain on the deck. To put the disarmed woman out of her misery Kasumi pulled out her pistol, an M-5 Phalanx, and put a pair of bullets into the Phantom’s brainpan before she cloaked once again.

At the same time Vega opened fire with his grenade launcher, launching three incendiaries in quick succession. Massive fireballs engulfed the enemy defilade before they even had a chance to react and a large number of troopers died screaming as they burned. The Nemeses were a little further back and protected from the initial fireballs, but their view of the enemy was blocked, so they moved to other vantage points.

Seconds later one of them lost their head and fell to the deck, but none of the others noticed as they focused on the enemy. They each activated their targeting lasers and picked their targets, only to come under counter-sniper fire from Garrus who had retrieved his sniper rifle, thankful that it had survived the enemy grenades. The Nemeses pulled back into cover, but one of them noticed that one of their number was missing their head, and it wasn’t lost by rifle fire.

Before she could sound a warning a small kunai dagger lodged itself into her throat and blood spurted out, leaving her to die gurgling in a pool of her own blood. The last two noticed their comrades plight, but before they could move Kasumi appeared and unleashed a torrent of shots from her M-9 Tempest sub-machinegun, quickly draining one Nemesis’s shields and the light rounds easily tore through her light armour, while the other died from a sniper round from Garrus.

Kasumi didn’t relax however as she sensed more than saw her surroundings. With electrical distortions two rapidly moving Phantoms with fully powered biotic barriers uncloaked and attacked her with straight single edged mono-molecular short swords. With a quick mental command through her graybox Kasumi activated her suit’s tech armour, appearing as blue floating strips of panels that covered her arms, legs, upper torso and wrapped around her head, which she used to stop the blades cold. She smirked as she took in the two Phantoms shocked stances.

“Surprise!” she said as she unleashed a powerful electric discharge through her tech armour and revelled in the shocked screams of her two opponents. The two Phantoms barriers faded away as they lost focus for a second and Kasumi took advantage by shooting the pair of them before they could recover. With a smirk she cloaked again.

The rest of the team took advantage of the chaos and stormed in with guns blazing. Several commandoes tried to put up a fight, but were quickly overwhelmed. The last surviving commando activated his omni-tool and punched in a few commands before Shepard found him. He tried to go for his shotgun, but Shepard’s rifle was already up. One finger twitched and a hole was drilled through the commando’s head. As the Commando fell dead a series of armoured doors opened and thunderous footsteps were heard.

Shepard spun around and saw that the last commando in death had the last laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me?!”

Four YMIR heavy mechs were stomping their way out of their alcoves along with a small army of LOKI security mechs. “Hostiles detected. Engaging.” With that all of the LOKIs opened up with sub-machinegun fire, forcing everyone into cover. One of the YMIRs opened up its left arm and launched a rocket at Wrex’s cover. With a krogan yelp he was thrown from cover and his barrier started flickering for a moment before it stabilized. With a roar he launched a warp at the offending YMIR, knocking it back for a moment as the biotic energies ate away at its shields, but they held and it straightened itself.

Suddenly multiple explosions rocked the enemy ranks followed almost instantly by bright blue beams, the after-effects of a set of GARDIAN lasers firing, which devastated the lumbering YMIRs which exploded spectacularly when their power-cores detonated, taking with them a large portion of the LOKIs.

Shepard and Vega grinned to each other and watched the SR-2, still in its docking cradle, retract one of its laser turrets back underneath a false panel. To Shepard’s eyes the SR-2 was beautiful. It was almost half again as long and had half again the height and wingspan as the original Normandy SR-1 and its unpainted hull a blank canvas for him to customize, he already had a colour scheme in mind even as the bullets from the LOKIs still flew over his head. He shook himself out of his reverie and returned his focus upon the enemy.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**SR-2 CIC, a few minutes earlier**

Miranda and a couple of techs worked at a feverish pace to bring at least one of the GARDIAN laser batteries under manual control. While the guns were installed, a lot of the final system installation had yet to be completed, and it was with quiet desperation the three of them made the final temporary connection with one of the batteries and powered it up. It was little more than a crude patch, but it was good enough to target anything within visual range, such as four heavy mechs that were converging on her ticket out of Cerberus.

“Watch the heat sinks. If they go into the red we may have a catastrophic overload on our hands!” Miranda ordered shortly as she activated the crudely patched targeting system. It took a few seconds for the system to lock onto her four primary targets, but she finally got the lock on signal and fired. Less than a second later four beams of concentrated infrared energy lanced out from the forward port GARDIAN battery, leaving behind a wake of blue-shifted air particles that lasted a second longer than the beams.

Near instantly the four heavies blew up spectacularly as the beams penetrated their power cores, causing Miranda to let slip a small smile. It didn’t last though. “Status?”

“Heat sinks are still in the green, but a large number of those LOKIs are outside of that GARDIAN battery’s engagement envelope,” reported one of the technicians.

Miranda let out a tired sigh. “Very well, power it down and retract it. LOKIs are small fry anyway. It shouldn’t take Shepard long to finish them off,” she said as she leaned back into her appropriated chair and watched the show, admiring the team Shepard had put together for this operation. They had quickly and methodically destroyed what Cerberus forces remained after she ordered the evacuation and self-destruct of the station, not that she had any intention of doing such a thing until after Shepard was aboard and they were long gone from the station.

As she suspected between the human master-thief and two soldiers, the turian infiltrator and krogan battle master, they quickly dispatched what remained of the dock’s mech forces, which were unfortunately no longer under her control due to the destruction of the primary servers.

A loud bang from the airlock door announced their guests and spooked the hell out of the techs and bridge crew. Hawthorne even let out a girlish scream at the first bang. _“Uh, ma’am, there’s someone at the airlock,”_ said Hawthorne over the comm. with a racing heartbeat.

Miranda chuckled. “Relax Mister Hawthorne, it’s just our tickets out of here. Open the airlock!”

With great reluctance Hawthorne did as he was told. To his horror a grinning krogan in red armour and toting a very large shotgun came stomping in, followed by an equally intimidating turian with an assault rifle levelled at his head. The two aliens eyes quickly looked over their target and soon lowered their weapons.

“Bridge is clear Shepard,” reported the turian as he and the krogan moved on to the CIC.

Three more entered through the airlock. This time to Hawthorne’s relief their guests were human, but to his horror one of them was wearing Cerberus Assault armour.

Seeing the terror on the helmsman’s face Shepard decided to alleviate it. He released his suit’s helmet pressure seals and with a slight tug he pulled it off his head and gave the helmsman a reassuring smile. “Permission to come aboard?”

Hawthorne visibly relaxed and his heartbeat came back down. “Permission granted. It’s an honour to have you aboard, sir,” he said quickly as he stood up to attention and saluted, which Shepard smartly returned.

“Where’s miss Lawson?” Shepard asked.

“She’s in the CIC, sir,” he replied as he sat back down.

Shepard nodded. “Carry on.” The trio moved on along the corridor that connected the bridge to the CIC. He quickly noticed that the interior was only half finished with open wall panels and wiring all over the place. CIC was no better with only delta shaped central holo-tank and stations in full working order. A large hologram of the SR-2 was currently being projected into the air that displayed the ship’s status and critical systems. Behind the SR-2 hologram was a galaxy-map interface and a pair of crew stations flanking it.

Garrus and Wrex were currently standing by the lift and keeping watch over the CIC while a pair of women, Miranda Lawson and a petite and curvaceous red headed woman stood at a crew station and were chatting quietly under their breath. Garrus grunted at Miranda and threw a glance Shepard’s way. She quickly left the red head behind and approached the Commander.

“Welcome aboard the SR-2, Commander Shepard,” greeted Miranda warmly as she held out her hand.

“Miranda,” Shepard returned as he firmly grasped her proffered hand then suddenly pulled her towards him and kissed her fiercely, surprising all the former Cerberus personnel in the CIC as they watched the normally ice cold Miranda Lawson, Director of the Minuteman Cell, practically melt into this man’s arms.

She seemed to struggle for a moment before she relaxed and returned the kiss. Both ran their hands across their clothed bodies for a few moments before they separated from each other, breathing heavily, and everyone watched stunned.

“Shepard, you dog,” said Kasumi teasingly as she made a half circuit around Miranda, inspecting every available inch of the woman. “Now how did you get a body like that? Definitely not natural selection, but without a more thorough _inspection_ I can’t tell if you’ve had any work done. I am so jealous, ‘cause wow!”

Miranda took in the little thief’s appearance and made a few of her own private observations. “Kasumi Goto, I presume? A pleasure to finally meet you face to face,” she said politely, still wrapped up in Shepard’s arms. “I assume that Shepard agreed to your price?”

“It’s one of the reasons I’m here,” said Kasumi with a tiny smirk.

Garrus shook himself out of his shocked stupor then directed a pointed look at Miranda. “Shepard, how do you know this, woman?”

Miranda returned the look with a touch of frost. “I was the last operative Cerberus sent to recruit Commander Shepard.” Garrus and Wrex’s jaws dropped to the deck while Kasumi’s smirk grew. Miranda merely shrugged at their reactions. “The Illusive Man thought that someone with a pretty face and a sharp mind could seduce him to our side. The first time Cerberus tried to recruit him, the recruiter ended up as an entree for the vorcha on Omega.”

Wrex rumbled with a barely contained chuckle, while Garrus simply commented, “Pretty harsh, Commander, but since it was a Cerberus recruiter I guess this former C-Sec Detective can forgive you.”

Shepard smiled back, but then his focus returned to Miranda. “Where’s Kaidan?”

“He’s in engineering, helping the team get the ship ready for launch. He’ll be along in a moment,” said Miranda.

“Excellent. Hold our departure until my team is all aboard, then set the station’s self-destruct,” said Shepard to Miranda’s delight.

“Yes Commander,” Miranda purred, sending a shiver down Shepard’s back.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**Minuteman Station;**

**Operations Centre**

The Ops Centre was a hive of activity as Cerberus personnel ran around and began deleting and destroying all of the computers, except for the one that controlled basic functions. Wilson was barking out orders to his underlings to shoot the consoles, when a heavy knock at the main entrance sounded. All activity stopped at the first knock, which groaned as it settled back down into place. Another knock and a huge dent in the metal appeared and snapped everyone out of their stupor.

“Defensive positions!” yelled Wilson as he dove behind one of the larger consoles for cover, pulling a Predator pistol from his holster and took aim at the door. “Techs, scramble the doors lock codes!”

The closest tech nodded and with a few keystrokes of his omni-tool the doors engaged their security locks with an audible clank. Moments later the door began to creak and seemed to ripple, as if it was slowly being turned into a liquid. Moments later a spark of blue revealed that someone was using Warp on the door, someone very powerful. With a rippling glow the door failed spectacularly when it exploded with wisps of biotic energy and fire from a C12 explosive satchel. Small grenades were tossed in and massive concussive waves of light and sound bombarded anyone not in proper cover and smoke billowed forth from a couple which obscured the defenders line of sight.

They could all hear the thundering footsteps of something big walking in. Out of the smoke came the hulking form of a krogan in full silver painted Mercenary heavy armour and totting a massive M-300 Claymore shotgun. “Knock, knock,” the krogan said with an unseen grin and proceeded to blast away with his shotgun as the Cerberus defenders opened fire with only pistols and a couple with M-8 Avenger assault rifles. He laughed openly as their weak weapons only did minimal damage to his shields while each blast from his shotgun belched out instant death for every poor bastard he targeted.

Wilson tried to use Overload to take out the krogan’s shields, but got shot in the shoulder for his trouble by a marine’s assault rifle, downing him instantly. More marines came pouring in and secured the Ops Centre in seconds as they shot the leftovers from the krogan’s breach and enter. Silence reigned for a moment after the last Cerberus goon was put down. Only the moans of the wounded remained and the krogan put his left hand up to the left side of head.

“Wrex, this is Skarr, we have control of the Operations Centre.” Skarr then poked at an injured Wilson. “We also seem to have caught ourselves a rather large fish, judging by this one’s uniform.”

_“Good work Skarr. Wreav and his team have taken the main armoury and your brood brother, Charr, is clearing out the remaining enemy troops, though calling them soldiers is certainly stretching it. How did your humans fare?”_ Wrex asked.

Skarr smiled underneath his helmet. “They’re not asari, but they make up for it with team work and numbers, and they’re much easier to work with than the turians.”

_“Good. Rendezvous at the dock as planned. The boss is going to blow this place sky high, and I do not want any of our people on it when it goes. Well, except for Wreav, but then he was also a nuisance,”_ said Wrex.

“Understood,” replied Skarr then he bellowed at the humans. “Pick up your little prizes and let’s get out of here. The place is about to blow!”

This made the marines double their efforts and soon enough everyone was running for either the SR-2 or the _Rules_ as fast as their legs could carry them. Wilson got dragged by the legs and hit his head against a door and everything went dark for him.

* * *

 

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

 

* * *

 

**SR-2; CIC,**

**Ten minutes later**

The ship was a hive of activity as the krogan and Alliance Navy personnel helped get the SR-2 ready for launch. Wreav had arrived a few minutes ago with several crates worth of various munitions from the station’s primary armoury, including a few extra spare parts for the ship’s primary weapon. Skarr had returned with his prisoner to the _Rules_ along with the majority of the marine assault team.

Shepard oversaw everything from the raised platform of the galaxy map interface and used it to read up on his ship. So far he was very impressed, except for one thing.

“Miranda, has Cerberus named this ship?” he asked.

“Not yet. All it has is a registration number and class name, the SR-2 destroyer, but I heard the Illusive Man wanted to name the ship for the Battle of Carthage,” said Miranda, much to Shepard’s distaste.

“Not exactly a bad name, but it doesn’t exactly fit,” said Shepard in though. “I think we should call it...”

“Sir, all personnel are aboard and accounted for. All Cerberus prisoners, except for Miss Lilium, have been transferred to the _Rules_ , and we’re set to depart,” said Lieutenant Vega, breaking Shepard’s train of thought.

“Very well Lieutenant,” grunted Shepard as he accessed the galaxy map and inputted their destination.

_“Aye sir, setting course for the Asgard System. ETA, twelve hours,”_ reported Hawthorne from the bridge as the docking bay doors opened.

The ship’s docking clamps released with an audible clang and with a burst of manoeuvring jets the SR-2 left dock and slid smoothly into open space. The _MSV Rules of Acquisition_ followed suit and the two ships entered FTL. Seconds later several large explosions rippled through Minuteman Station, gutting the internal structure. The next to detonate was the station’s fusion reactor plant which destroyed whatever was left, leaving behind only a small amount of debris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That went a little quicker than I thought. Comments?


	3. Interlude 1

** Shiver ME Relays **

A witty woman is a treasure;

A witty beauty is a power!

George Meredith

**Interlude I**

* * *

 

**SR-2; CIC**

Shepard and Miranda smiled as they watched the destruction of Minuteman Station on the central holo-tank which was receiving the transmission from a spy satellite left behind by the _Rules of Acquisition_ on their way out of the system. This was the tenth such Cerberus base or operation Shepard had shut down in the last couple of years and Miranda’s first in service to her new masters.

“A beautiful sight, isn’t it?” he asked her as they watched it break up.

“Yes, it is,” replied Miranda with barely a hint of her satisfaction showing on her lips, which quickly disappeared. “We had a slight wrinkle. The former director of the Minuteman Cell, Hope Lilium, managed to tag along. It seems that she kept an even closer eye on me than I thought possible. She knew about our code word, but luckily not its meaning. Thanks to young Yeoman Kelly Chambers here Miss Lilium didn’t blast my head off.”

The red head in question blushed a little at the praise. “I managed to get a preliminary interview going after we locked her up in the port secondary hold, but she’s clammed up. I’ve barely been able to get out a few words out of her, which include “Alliance whore” and “traitor”. If you don’t mind I’d like to step up the interrogation.”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed. “Step it up how?”

“I’d like permission to utilize non-conventional enhanced interrogation techniques. Anything less and we won’t get anything out of her, except by a meld with an asari with malleable morals,” said Kelly with a slightly sinister smile.

Shepard stepped closer to Kelly and loomed over her. “What exactly was your position in the Minuteman Cell?”

Kelly’s smile became sweet. “Officially I was the Director’s secretary. I served under both Miss Lilium and Miss Lawson. Guess who I prefer to work under.” Every ex-Cerberus crewmember in earshot sniggered at that except for Miranda who only let out a small smile.

“Unofficially I was the station’s morale officer and resident psychologist. I was also trained in treating victims of torture and abuse. As such I learned a lot about the most common forms of torture, so Cerberus also took advantage of my training for interrogation purposes. Mostly Alliance personnel. This was before Miss Lawson removed my control chip,” she explained as she turned around and lifted her hair out of the way, displaying a thin scar that marred her otherwise creamy complexion at the base of her skull. “I cannot thank you enough, Miss Lawson, for getting that thing out of me.”

The older woman smiled kindly at Kelly. “It’s actually Shepard you should be thanking. He found the same kind of control chip in my brain as well. Of course that was after he kidnapped me on Terra Nova last year,” she said ruefully.

“I apologized to you after I knocked you out. Besides it was only a tap to the back of the head,” said Shepard as he backed away slightly.

“Which gave me the mother-in-law of all headaches, especially after you had Doctor Chakwas extract that thing from my head!” Miranda countered with a rather harsh poke to the chest, which she instantly regretted as she momentarily forgot he was still in heavy armour.

With Miranda broken out of her train of thought Shepard then returned his focus to Kelly. “Alright. Do what you can until we arrive at Terra Nova. We’ll be putting in for final fitting out, then on a full shakedown run before we begin our mission.”

Kelly smartly saluted. “Aye sir.” She then turned on her heel and entered the lift, swaying her hips slightly, drawing Shepard’s eyes to her shapely rear. As she entered she pulled a one eighty on her heel and winked one of her emerald eyes at him, just before the lift doors closed.

“I see she’s caught your eye,” said Miranda with a slight smirk.

“I thought you preferred your partners to be a little more ample,” said Garrus with slightly twitching mandibles, the turian equivalent of a smirk.

Miranda then turned to Garrus. “Garrus, what is the primary role of a morale officer in the turian military?” she asked.

The question perplexed Garrus, but he answered anyway. “Morale officers have been part of the turian military since the beginning. We have tighter operational discipline than your Alliance, but fewer personal restrictions. Our officers ride their people hard and know that they need to blow off steam. Morale officers provide various activities for their units entertainment and provide similar services as your psychologists. They also provide...” his thoughts then turned towards the special services they provided. “They also provide physical stress relief,” he concluded with a very broad turian grin. “She was the morale officer for your cell?”

“Oh yes. Her services were highly in demand. We were working twelve hour days, seven days a week and without a form of stress relief we would have snapped at each other. I used her services myself, upon occasion,” Miranda purred as she surreptitiously goosed Shepard’s butt, who barely stopped himself from jumping.

“Garrus, why don’t you take a look at the ship’s weapon systems. I’m sure you can find something to calibrate before we arrive at the Wolves Den!” suggested Shepard, though his tone made it more like an order, despite being a couple of octaves higher.

Garrus immediately stood at attention. “Yes sir. Miss Lawson, where can I find the service access for the primary weapons?”

Miranda’s face turned all business. “Deck three. Just head straight towards the bow and you’ll arrive at the forward batteries.”

Garrus nodded to her in respect and down the spiral staircase. Wrex finally reminded everyone of his presence with his rumbling chuckle. “Well, well, Shepard. Seems like you’ve got almost as many females throwing themselves at you as I do back home on Tuchanka.”

Shepard smirked back. “One of the perks of being a hero. Anyway, Miranda, how about you show me around my new ride. Kaidan only managed to get some basic information about the ship and a couple of exterior pictures.”

Miranda smiled and led him to the galaxy map podium. “Let’s start with where we are now, the CIC. As you can see the ship was still undergoing final system integration when you liberated her. It’s similar to the original design, only a little bigger.” She then worked the central console and shut down the galaxy map holo and brought up a smaller version of the ship’s status hologram and highlighted a portion of it. “Unlike the original Normandy SR-1 the Combat Deck is now deck two. The Illusive Man also originally wanted the ship to be equipped with several windows.”

Seeing the incredulous look on Shepard’s face she shrugged. “I know. Windows on a stealth vessel didn’t make much sense to me either. Luckily I managed to get all but the bridge windows removed. Can’t really beat the good old fashioned Mark 1 eye ball for reliability.”

She then highlighted the area just aft of the lift. “Behind the lift is the new War Room for strategic planning and analysis. On the port side behind the spiral staircase is a combined communications and conference room with an experimental quantum entanglement communicator. A new toy that I’m sure the Alliance is going to appreciate. On the starboard side is where we originally planned to install a state-of-the-art laboratory. We just haven’t installed the equipment yet.”

Next she highlighted deck 3. “Deck 3 is the Crew Deck where the mess hall and a small kitchen is located, along with primary life support, port and starboard lounges and crew quarters. The medical bay and Computer Core room is also on deck 3 and at the bow is the forward gunnery control room which also provides a direct access to the ship’s main gun,” she said with a devious smile.

“I know that look. What’s so special about this gun?” Shepard asked.

“It’s actually based on an experimental turian weapon and an old human idea. The engineers who built it called it a plasma accelerator cannon, or PAC for short.” This raised Shepard’s eyebrows and Miranda continued. “The main weakness of every previous plasma weapon designed for a warship was their ridiculous short range and exorbitant energy requirements. The turian weapon was called the Thanix Cannon. It was based on a recovered geth weapon from their little invasion of the Citadel. You should remember it well. It was such weapons that tore apart eight Alliance cruisers and almost crippled the asari dreadnought, the _Destiny Ascension_.”

Shepard nodded. “I saw the tail end of the battle from the Citadel Tower, after I put a bullet through Saren’s back, though not in time to save Nihlus,” he said as he slipped into a memory of that ‘historic’ day.

Him, Nihlus, Garrus and Wrex had fought their way from Zakera Ward to the Citadel Tower and climbed over a veritable mountain of geth troopers and recently created husks. Once they arrived they found a small army of geth had occupied the Tower and to their astonishment Spectre agent Saren Arterius was in charge and was working at a previously unknown console. After a hard fight that ended with Saren getting the drop on Nihlus and killing him, but Shepard put a solid shotgun slug in Saren’s back, paralyzing him from the neck down. After that all Saren did was spout insane ramblings about the return of something called Reapers and that the Citadel was the key. Shepard was about to question Saren, but a very large piece of debris crashed into the tower, forcing everyone to duck for cover, but Saren got crushed, along with any answers he might have had.

“I just wish the turian bastard had survived. We still don’t know exactly what these Reapers are, whether or not they were simply the ramblings of a madman or if it’s something real,” said Shepard. “Let’s continue with the tour.”

Miranda nodded and highlighted the next deck. “Deck 4 is engineering and secondary cargo-deck spaces. Not much else there.” She moved on to deck 5. “Deck 5 is the combined shuttle bay, armoury and ground-vehicle bay. The designers had originally meant for the armoury to be on deck 2 where the Comm. room/Conference room is now. Jacob quickly disabused the designers of that notion and had them move it down to Deck 5. Now you get off the lift, pick up your gear and get aboard the shuttle, just like the original Normandy.”

“Sounds like we owe Mister Taylor a thank you for that,” said Shepard with a smile.

Miranda then highlighted a much smaller deck above the Combat Deck. “For the coup de grace the project engineers saw that there was room directly underneath the pressure hull for another deck, so they decided to make the entire deck into the captain’s suite. The yard workers nicknamed it ‘the loft.’ Much of the amenities, such as the en-suite bathroom,  were installed, but the interior decorators were not finished furbishing it.”

“Wait, the Illusive Man commissioned interior decorators for his latest warship?” Shepard asked. “Was this ship going to be his new mobile command centre?”

Miranda smiled back. “Actually he was going to use this ship as a bribe to get you to join Cerberus. As far as I know he never suspected that you would turn one of his top operatives.“

“I bet he didn’t. So, how far did they get with the captain’s quarters?” he asked.

Her smile turned into a smirk. “They managed to get a king sized double bed in there and a very comfortable couch and a coffee table, but not much else. One of the decorators wanted to put a fish tank of all things in there. Luckily I managed to convince the others of that stupidity. I mean really, who has a fish tank aboard a warship?”

It was Shepard’s turn to blush. “I used to have a fish tank in my quarters back home.” This made Miranda raise a delicate eyebrow. “My parents wanted me to learn responsibility, and taking care of some fish in a tank is a lot easier aboard a merchant vessel than getting a dog or a cat.”

She nodded at that piece of logic. “Well then, shall we continue with our show and tell, or do you want to retire to the captain’s quarter? I’m sure you want to get rid of that armour and hit the showers,” she said with a smirk.

Shepard tugged a little at his armour. “I could use a hand in getting out of this getup.”

The two of them left the podium for the lift. Everyone within eyeshot tried to keep a surreptitious eye on the pair. Only Wrex noticed that Kasumi had disappeared, just before the lift doors closed. He grinned and let out a small chuckle. _Looks like the little lion is bringing more females into his pride_.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**SR-2; Deck 4, port cargo hold**

Kelly once again entered the port cargo hold and revelled in the vision of the former director of the Minuteman Cell trussed up with cargo straps. Her arms were held up to the ceiling and she appeared to be straddling a contraption that looked like a saddle and her legs were tied down to the deck. At the sound of the door opening Hope looked up at her interrogator with loathing in her eyes.

“Well, hello again, Hope,” said Kelly as she took a seat opposite of the Cerberus loyalist. “Guess what I just got!” Hope’s gaze became even more venomous. “I got permission from the Spectre to use some of the techniques you had me use on our fellow humans!” declared Kelly with smirk on her usually sweet face.

Hope’s eyes widened in fear, and Kelly merely chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be using pain. Cerberus trains all their operatives to resist it and gave you implants to help mitigate any pain an interrogator might inflict. I on the other hand have a very different modus operandi.” Kelly pulled a box forward and pulled out a set of wires and electrodes. “Don’t worry, these are just to make sure that you are not lying to me.” She then began by applying a little bit of adhesive ointment onto the electrodes and put them at various pulse points across Hope’s body. As the cool ointment touched her skin she couldn’t help but shiver as they stuck fast.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re sitting in a saddle. Well, strictly speaking it isn’t a saddle. It’s an old friend of mine and a few of my clients. A sybian!” Kelly then activated her omni-tool and with a few keystrokes Hope felt a small intruder poke her in the nether region.

“What are you doing to me?” Hope demanded as she felt something cool and wet coat the inside of her nether lips.

“Just a little lubrication. I don’t want to do any permanent damage to that delectable body part of yours.” Kelly worked her omni-tool again and something began to poke deeper into Hope’s nether lips. It was long and thin and no matter how much Hope tried she couldn’t raise herself off of it or wriggle it out of her.

“I suggest you stop struggling now. You’ll only make it worse!” said Kelly as the thing began to expand inside Hope’s pussy, filling it up and stretching her to capacity. She had never felt so full before, and Kelly smirked at Hope’s moans of reluctant pleasure. “Already moaning like a needy bitch,” said Kelly as she stood up and began to walk a slow circuit around her captive. “I haven’t even started with you yet!”

A smaller nub grew from the saddle and began vibrating against her clit. “Is this your great interrogation technique? Make me cum and I’ll tell you everything?! You’re even more deluded than I thought!” said Hope as she gritted her teeth.

“Oh no. It’s not that simple. During our sessions I learned a lot about your body. I know exactly what gets you hot, and what sets you off,” said Kelly in a sultry whisper in Hope’s ear, causing even more shocks to go through her body. With a flick of a finger the entire fake phallus began to vibrate, stimulating Hope’s G-spot directly and made her howl in surprise. Another flick of a finger and it all stopped suddenly. “I also know exactly how to deny you release.”

Hope panted for a few seconds as tears of frustration ran down her cheeks. “You Alliance bitch!”

Kelly then sat herself behind Hope. “I may be an Alliance bitch, but you are a Cerberus Loyalist, which makes you an even lower bitch than I ever was when I was chipped. You had no control chip, so that means everything you did for Cerberus was of your own free will.” Kelly then began to tease Hope’s bare nipples, making her shudder in pleasure. “How does it feel to no longer be in control? Does it make you feel powerless? Does it scare you?”

“Up yours!” Hope bit out, which only made Kelly chuckle.

“Oh believe me, you’re the one who will soon be begging for release. No man or woman in either the Alliance or Cerberus is trained to resist pleasure. The longer I deny you the ultimate release the more you will be broken. The question for you now is how long can you last?”

With that Hope howled as the sybian fired up again.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**SR-2; Deck 1, Captain’s Quarters**

The duo exited the lift and into a small room with another sealed and armoured door opposite the lift. Miranda led him in and Shepard’s eyebrows rose up to his hairline as he took in ‘the loft’. It had a curved ceiling, but there was more than enough headroom for a man a foot taller than Shepard. The second thing he noticed was a basic desk and glass display case with shelves along the starboard bulkhead. It created a separation between the office and the bedroom proper, which as Miranda had mentioned earlier had a very large king size bed which looked very inviting.

A tug at his arm reminded him why he was there. “Let’s get you out of that armour,” said Miranda as she began popping the seals of his appropriated Cerberus Assault Armour. Starting with the gauntlets and the power-pack mounted to his upper back. Next to come off was the heavy shoulder pads and the boots which loosened with a slight whoosh of released pressure seals, then the leg armour. Finally the heavy torso armour was removed with a little bit of extra help from Miranda. It was classified as heavy armour for a damned good reason. Shepard sighed in relief as the heavy weight of the armour came off his shoulders, to which Miranda smirked.

“Cerberus shock troops have a saying about this armour. ‘Out of shape going in, in shape coming out’,” she said as she began to help him with his skin tight under shirt and trousers.

“It actually saved my life a few times, but I’ll only wear it after its been repainted in N7 colours,” said Shepard as he gave the stink eye at the hated symbol of Cerberus imprinted on the left breast of the armour, then returned his attention back to Miranda who was slowly and teasingly wriggling out of her own uniform.

“I may have to burn this uniform. I don’t think I ever want to wear it again,” said Miranda as she stripped down to her underwear. A black silk lace panty and bra combination which hinted at the enticing flesh underneath. “It’s been a very stressful day, and I believe we both could use a shower.” With deliberate slowness she bent over in front of him and slid her panties off, showing off her perfect ass, and unclipped her bra and let it fall, before she straightened up and half turned towards him. Her left arm barely covered her breasts. “See something you like?”

Shepard smirked back. “Very much, but let’s get that shower going.”

Miranda nodded and the two of them entered the small bathroom. It was quite spartan with bare metal walls, an open shower cubicle with a sliding glass door, and had a basic toilet and wash basin. Shepard quickly entered the shower cubicle with an equally eager Miranda following. With a twist of a knob warm soothing water came flowing from a large showerhead, washing away all the sweat and grime from the day’s fighting, and Shepard luxuriated in the feeling of the aches and pains in his muscles and bones slowly being soothed. Behind him Miranda’s strong yet delicate hands worked his tense neck and back muscles as he leaned against the wall.

“Good god, you’ve got so many knots in your back,” said Miranda as she worked his back and enjoyed the water washing over both his and her glorious naked bodies.

Shepard smiled then hissed slightly as she hit a tender spot. “Oh, right there.” It was a badly bruised muscle from when a particularly large Cerberus commando had tackled him to the ground. Not his proudest moment. “So, how long do you think it’s going to take to get this bird ship shape?”

Miranda momentarily stopped her ministrations. “Shouldn’t take any longer than a couple of weeks. Why? Are we needed somewhere soon?”

“No. It’s just that another human colony in the Terminus disappeared a week ago. One of the Farscape Corporation mining colonies, you know, one of those smaller operations?”

Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “Another colony? Same MO as the others?” Shepard nodded in reply and Miranda began her ministrations again, though a little rougher than before. “Does the Alliance have any leads on who is doing this?”

“No. No evidence and no witnesses. Did you hear anything on the Cerberus grapevine?” he asked.

“The Illusive Man put an investigation team on it, but due to the compartmentalization he insisted upon I never had any direct contact with it. All I got was some of the team’s reports and all of them the same. A large number of empty buildings and one giant mystery,” said Miranda with a slightly frustrated tone.

Shepard nodded. “We need a break!”

“Yes, we do, and quickly!” Miranda then moulded herself into Shepard’s back. “But for now let’s just enjoy ourselves. We’ve still got another eleven hours until we reach our destination.” Her arms looped around Shepard’s broad frame and her hands began exploring familiar grounds. “Who would have believed that a Cerberus Operative and an N7 Commando would make such a perfect pair?” she asked as her hands travelled south. Her creamy smooth hands began caressing Shepard’s nether region, using her nails to subtly tease his ball sack and one of her hands began stroking his rapidly rising erection.

“Did you have fun with that asari whore, John?” she asked huskily in his ear. As a result his erection jumped to full mast and it was all he could do to stop himself from spinning around and pin her to the shower wall. “I thought so. Did you also enjoy what miss Goto had to offer?”

“You know I did!” growled Shepard in a low voice.

“Mmm, can’t wait to sample that one, but right now I want you all to myself,” said Miranda huskily into his ear. With a low growl Shepard spun around and pinned her up against the shower wall. “Oh god, I’ve missed this!” she breathed as she felt him enter her wet and ready centre. His hands travelled all over her body, starting with a hot groping of her delectable derriere, then teased up her sides, making her giggle slightly at being tickled, then gasped again as she felt his warm tongue give a short lick of her pulse-point on her neck and a short nip of his teeth shortly after in the same place.

She surprised him by wrapping her legs around his waist and returned the bite, forcing him to take her full weight. “Now I’m in control!” she said victoriously as she began grinding her smouldering heat upon his length.

“Is that so?” He growled back as he slammed her back into the wall. “I think you need a reminder of who is in charge around here!” He proceeded to ram himself into her with renewed vigour, kissing her plump bee-stung lips as his tongue sought entry. She allowed him in, only to counter with her own tongue. Both their tongues intertwined as the two alphas sought dominance over each other, with her constant pelvic grinding and Shepard’s hard thrusting that seemed to go deeper with every thrust. He soon felt himself reach the very end of her depths and Miranda clamped down on his length in response.

In that moment both looked into each other’s eyes and saw the lust and love they have for each other, and he saw Miranda surrender to ecstasy, with him following shortly after. For a moment they both took a few moments to catch their breath as their heart rates slowed down from the rush.

“So, shall we continue this somewhere a little more comfortable,” said a slightly out of breath Shepard as he turned off the shower.

Miranda let out a couple of pants before answering. “Thought you’d never ask, but let’s dry off first!” she said as she grabbed a couple towels for them. They helped each other dry off the water from their bodies and headed straight for the bedroom. Both had smiles on their faces as they settled down onto the bed. “I’ve missed you for so long. Being without you for six months should be a crime. Kelly is a fine woman, but a poor substitute for you,” she said as she gave him a hot kiss on the lips. “I know you couldn’t keep celibate in all that time. How many beds did you warm in your travels?”

Shepard thought back over the last six months, though it was a little difficult with the vision of beauty lying in front of him. “Only a few. One of them was a former squad-mate of mine. Ashley Williams. A fine woman and soldier, but she has a chip the size of an asteroid on her shoulder.”

Miranda chuckled a little. “I can guess why.”

Shepard nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Being the granddaughter of General Williams certainly didn’t do her any favours. However assisting the first human Spectre seems to have helped. Last I heard she got herself a promotion to Operations Chief and got sent out to the Traverse. She’s assisting the colony on Horizon with upgrading their defences.”

He then got a faraway look in his eyes as he idly played with Miranda’s hair. “Other than her, there wasn’t anyone really noteworthy, except for that asari maiden I met on Therum a couple of years ago, a Doctor Liara T’Soni. A pretty little thing and oh so easily impressionable, especially after I rescued her from the geth. We didn’t figure out what they wanted her for until after Saren’s geth attack on the Citadel.”

Miranda nodded as she idly trailed her fingers across his chest. “I read the reports about her and some of her research papers on the protheans. Some of T’Soni’s theories are intriguing, but like so many other theories about them there is just so little evidence to back them up. Did you hear if they dug out anything out of that prothean beacon you and Spectre Agent Kryik brought back from Eden Prime?”

Shepard shook his head. “No. They haven’t even been able to turn it on yet. Last I heard Doctor T’Soni tried to use a meld to access it, but it seems that asari physiology isn’t compatible.” His eyes suddenly clamped shut as a brief flash of green blinded his mind’s eye and a sudden pain erupted behind his eyes, like several tiny spikes were digging into the back of them.

“You okay?” Miranda asked with worried eyes.

Shepard took a couple of deep breaths. “Yeah. Ever since that asari, Shiala or something, on Feros a couple of years back mind raped me I’ve been getting these flashes of memory. She said that she was giving me something she called the Prothean Cipher, along with a few of her memories, but I’ve never been able to fully access them. They’ve been getting worse recently and I haven’t really trusted another asari to delve that deeply into my mind again.”

Miranda’s eyes tightened a little. “Maybe you should rethink that policy. Not every asari is a cold hearted commando or skanky dancers and whores. Maybe after the ship is fully fitted out we could ask Liara to meld with you.”

This made Shepard raise an eyebrow. “How can you trust her? As far as I know you two have never met. Right?”

Miranda averted her eyes and blushed a little. “I met her after the geth attack on the Citadel. I was assigned to gather intelligence about you and the people you surrounded yourself with. The Illusive Man wanted to know if it was just your team mates that made you so formidable, or if it was your leadership abilities, or a combination of both. My conclusion was that it was a combination of your leadership and skills on the battlefield and their own abilities which you helped to guide not just in battle, but also in life.” She sat herself up and let out a sigh.

“I was sent undercover to Ilos as one of the human archaeologists research assistants. It was both an opportunity to learn more about the protheans and about the good doctor. She and I talked quite a bit about those days on the _Normandy_ and that little corvette you got just after the Council made you a Spectre. What was it called again?”

Shepard smiled a little as he thought of his first real command. “The _SSV Sparrow_. The first stealth corvette built by the Alliance based on the Normandy’s design. A tough little ship, but she was nothing compared to this.”

Miranda smirked down at him. “Good. It’s nice to know that my efforts were not wasted upon you. Enough of all this dreary talk!” She took advantage of his prone position on his back and pounced upon his lap and immediately got a firm grip on his balls and shaft and started stroking. “Ready for another round?” she huskily asked. In response his erection grew to full size.

“That should be answer enough!” Shepard retorted as he reached forward to cup her luscious breasts, using his thumbs to tease her nipples, making her gasp and her pussy became even more plump and wet.

“Mm, you know exactly how to get me going,” she purred as she lined his dick up and lowered herself onto him with an audibly wet squelch. She settled down onto his length and began to teasingly grind her clit against his pubic bone and steadied herself by putting her hands on his chest as she began panting with need. Shepard responded by thrusting upward into her, which made her arch her back, shaking her large natural breasts.

From behind the desk a little thief under cloak was in awe as she watched two alpha personalities go at it. The only reason she didn’t go join them was that she heard what Miranda said earlier in the shower. She wanted him for herself for now, so Kasumi respected that need and merely indulged in her voyeuristic fetish as she felt her ‘special addition’ vibrate in her own soaking wet pussy.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**SR-2; Deck 4, port cargo hold**

In the meantime Hope’s situation was getting worse every second she was in the ‘care’ of Miss Chambers. Her body was drenched with sweat and she could feel herself slipping as her vision turned into a haze. Kelly stalked around her prey as she observed every unconscious twitch of both Hope’s face and body as she shuddered in denied pleasure.

“Please, let me cum,” Hope cried out as she was denied release once again.

“Not yet. Now, let’s try this again. You must first answer all of my questions truthfully, and I mean all of them! Otherwise I will leave you like this for the next fortnight. Now, first question. How did you know about our code phrase?”

Hope’s head rolled from side to side in exhaustion. “Like I told you, for the third time, I kept a close eye on Operative Lawson ever since she took over my cell. I had installed multiple surveillance VIs on my station. It snapped up a number of conversations and a few encrypted chat channels. I picked up the last text message she sent, but failed to make the connection in time.”

Kelly checked her omni-tool and saw the truth indicator flash green. Her face turned stony as she asked her next question. “Does the Illusive Man know anything about our defection?”

“No,” Hope answered dejectedly.

Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you report your suspicions?”

 “Because after Lawson took over I protested and I was chastised quite harshly for it. He reminded me that it was my fault that the SR-2 project had derailed so I thought it best to only report you when I had solid evidence. I believe in what Cerberus stands for. I wanted to rise to the top, and I believed if I could get some sort of dirt on Miranda, or prove her incompetence I could regain and strengthen my position in the organization. Obviously it didn’t go as planned,” she concluded. Her head hung low in exhaustion, but her body still twitched as unwanted tears streamed down her face.

Kelly gave a sigh of relief. “At least we don’t have to worry about a Cerberus assassination squad in the immediate future. Do you know if there were more Cerberus ship projects?”

“I was only privy to our stealth corvette and frigate projects. I have no knowledge about the Illusive Man’s other Cells.”

Kelly’s eyes practically became slits. “Why did he give you operational control of the SR2 project?”

Hope’s eyes cleared slightly. “Because I had experience constructing stealth vessels from the SRC corvette program. He thought that my experience would translate into results. The _Carthage SR2_ was going to be the first human stealth destroyer. A heavy frigate with the firepower of a cruiser and be capable of stealth reconnaissance missions. It was supposed to be my crowning achievement, and Miranda Lawson stole it right out from under me!”

Kelly checked her omni-tool again and saw that as far as her biometric sensors could tell Miss Lilium was telling the truth, or as she knew it anyway. “Well, since you’ve been so truthful I believe you deserve a little reward.” With that the sybian fired up again and didn’t stop until Hope’s back arched and her eyes rolled back as she cried out in ecstasy. Waves of orgasmic pulses flowed through her sexually tortured body. Moments later the dark skinned form of Hope Lilium passed out and slumped in her restraints, finally silent after screaming her release.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**SR-2; Deck 3, Forward batteries**

Garrus was hard at work examining his new favourite place on the ship. In front of him was the partially installed Plasma Accelerator Cannon, and he was in love with it. He had participated in the recovery efforts of a number of Geth warships and even assisted with the development of the turian Thanix Cannon, but Cerberus it seems had made massive improvements. Instead of a molten tungsten-uranium slug the PAC fires a highly concentrated and hyper-accelerated 5 kilogram sliver of tungsten infused plasma tapped directly from the ship’s fusion reactors to 10% light-speed.

“A beauty isn’t it?” said a human male’s voice which snapped Garrus out of his trance. “The designers said that this beast can cut through even the _ASV Destiny Ascension’s_ shields and still have enough power to at the very least breach her armour.” The human was roughly six foot tall, had a rough eastern-European look and had short brown hair. “Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, at your service,” he said as he held out his hand.

Garrus eyed the lieutenant through narrowed eyes. “Garrus Vakarian. I didn’t see you on the _Rules of Acquisition_ , Lieutenant. I’m assuming your Commander Shepard’s little mole in Cerberus?”

Alenko smiled back. “That’s me. I was undercover for four years. You can’t imagine how often I had to stay my biotics from crushing every Cerberus xenophobe I encountered.” A biotic aura manifested itself at the mention of xenophobe, but it quickly vanished. “Sorry about that. Being an L2 can sometimes be a pain in the ass.”

Garrus hummed in thought as he reached out and accepted the Lieutenant’s handshake. “Perfectly understandable. I knew an asari maiden or two back in C-Sec that couldn’t help stop their biotic auras from manifesting themselves when they were under stress.”

Kaidan smiled back. “Really?”

Garrus nodded as he took his hand back. “You’ve known the Commander long?”

Kaidan nodded back. “Met him during my survival training on Titan. I joined the Alliance Marine Corp not long after BAaT got shut down, mostly so I could fight. I wasn’t exactly a model Alliance recruit back in those days. Commander Shepard managed to straighten me out by knocking a couple of my teeth out.”

This made Garrus’ eyes widen. “That doesn’t sound like the Commander. He usually handles people much more civilly, except for the occasional Cerberus recruiter, terrorist, pirate or slaver.”

Kaidan chuckled back. “Yes, well, the Commander always did have a nasty temper, especially when he was younger. He also has a slight mean streak when he disciplines his troops.”

Garrus’ attention returned to the PAC. “I see that the weapon isn’t complete. I assume the rest of the pieces are down on the hangar deck?”

Kaidan nodded. “Need a hand bringing them up?”

“Sure, I could also use a hand putting this gun together,” said Garrus as the two of them headed for the hangar deck via the central lift. As soon as they stepped out they were quickly met by the muzzle of a rather large shotgun pointed at the turian’s head and the bloodthirsty grin of Urdnot Wreav.

“Remember me?” said Wreav just as his talon began to squeeze the trigger.

In a flash of biotics Kaidan kicked straight into the krogan’s chest which sent him flying across the length of the hangar deck and straight into the forward ramp with an audible clang. As Wreav slid down the ramp and back down to the deck in a dazed heap, leaving behind a noticeable dent in the armoured ramp, both Kaidan and Garrus drew their pistols. Garrus drew an M-6 Carnifex with a holographic scope and heavy barrel mod, while Kaidan drew a Cerberus M-358 Talon with incendiary mode activated. A few marines in the hangar saw the flying krogan and the glow of biotics. They immediately grabbed their weapons and backed up the two senior officers.

“You know this krogan, Garrus?” Kaidan asked as he trained his pistol at Wreav’s armour plated head.

“Yeah. He was part of the Alliance assault on Minuteman Station, one of the mercs Urdnot Wrex recruited,” said Garrus as he too aimed his pistol at Wreav’s head, or more precisely his left eye.

“So if we shoot this idiot we’re going to have a trouble with the rest of the krogan mercs?” Kaidan asked.

“No,” said a deep rumbling voice behind them. Kaidan risked a glance behind him and saw a massive hulking krogan in blood red armour. “I am Urdnot Wrex, and that sorry excuse for varren shit is my brood brother Wreav. We share the same mother, but nothing else!”

Wreav finally awoke from his dazed state and tried to raise his shotgun, only to have it pulled out of his hands by Kaidan’s biotic pull. “Big mistake human!” growled Wreav as he got back up and rushed towards Kaidan, only to be stopped in his tracks by a stasis field, much to the amusement of Wrex.

“Nice one human. Is it a permeable stasis field or just a simpler solid field?” Wrex asked.

“A simple solid one. I haven’t completely mastered stasis just yet,” Kaidan answered dejectedly.

Wrex stepped forward and seemed to study the stasis field. “Still impressive for a human. How long does it last?”

Kaidan perked up a little. “It self-sustains itself for roughly thirty seconds, but if I focus I have been able to sustain it for several minutes. Only problem is that if I sustain it too long I get terrible migraines.”

This confused Wrex. “Huh?”

Kaidan explained. “I’m wired with the L2 biotic suite. The first generation human biotic implants, the L1s, barely allows humans to control their biotic powers, though limited in sheer strength. The L2 implants sometimes grant far more power, almost equal to asari commandoes in some cases, however they can cause some rather severe side-effects. I’m one of the lucky ones that only gets migraines.”

“And the unlucky ones?” Wrex asked.

Kaidan shrugged his shoulders. “Insanity, crippling pains, mental disabilities...”

This raised Wrex’s opinion of the human. “Damn. You are a tough one, for a human,” he said with a wide toothy grin.

Kaidan smirked back. “So, any ideas about what to do about Wreav?”

Wrex turned to glare at his brood brother. “I have a few ideas. Wreav, I thought I told you to play nice with the turian and the humans?!”

Wreav growled in anger and tried to break free with brute force. “And I said I would kill that turian bastard once the mission was over. The Alliance has the ship now. My contract is complete. Now get me the hell out of this thing!”

“Relax, varren shit!” Wrex growled. “You heard the human. You should be getting out of that stasis field any second now!”

At that moment the stasis field failed and Wrex reared his head back and knocked Wreav on his ass. Wreav wasn’t down long as he got back up almost immediately to tackle Wrex, only to be backhanded with a biotically enhanced punch from Wrex back onto the deck.

“Why do you always have to make things harder than they have to be?” said Wrex as he towered over his fallen brood brother.

Wreav’s face turned into a nasty snarl. “You are weak, Wrex. We should be out there exterminating the turians and salarians.”

Wrex glowed with a violent biotic aura. “Then why are you lying there on the deck like a kicked varren?”

“For this!” In that instant Wreav pulled a knife from his boot and aimed a thrust at Wrex’s groin plate.

Garrus’ keen eye spotted the knife the moment it was drawn. He took careful aim and fired one shot at Wreav’s knife hand, shattering the delicate bones in his hand and stopping the blade’s thrust before impact.

Wrex’s biotic aura became even more powerful and violent as his blood rage took hold. “Goodbye, brother!” With that Wrex proceeded to pummel his brother into the deck, not letting Wreav have any openings. He stomped on Wreav’s crippled hand then biotically lifted him then slammed him back onto the deck. This made the Alliance marines, Cerberus defectors and turian in the audience to quickly vacate the immediate area as the two krogan tore each other apart.

From the lift Lieutenant Vega came out to a scene not unlike an ancient gladiatorial bout, and he decided to watch the show next to Garrus and Kaidan. “Anyone taking bets?” he asked as Wrex blasted Wreav with a warp field, cracking his brother’s shields.

“Put me down for twenty on Wrex,” said Garrus to the surprise of Kaidan.

“Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, stop this?” Kaidan asked.

Vega looked at his fellow Lieutenant askance. “You want to get in between a pair of krogan in the middle of a blood rage fuelled slugfest? This is better than pay-per-view!”

“Besides, if we interfere we’ll become targets too,” said the deep rumbling voice of Charr, a krogan in blue armour and wearing a mechanics vest with various tools sticking out of several pockets. “Put me down for fifty on Wrex. You don’t bet against a krogan battle master with biotics.”

“Biotics ain’t everything. I’ll put ten on the other one,” said Vega as Wreav finally got back up and got in a few good punches, making Wrex stagger back slightly.

Wrex’s fist glowed with violent biotic fury as he bull-rushed Wreav. The two of them crashed into the forward ramp, which Wreav once again took the brunt of the impact and slumped back down onto the deck. Wrex then drew his arm back and aimed straight for Wreav’s groin. With a sickening crunch of metal and flesh Wreav’s balls were crushed and a shrill shriek, a sound nobody expected from a krogan, wrenched itself out of his mouth, and every male in the room unconsciously winced and moved to protect their privates.

Wrex then picked up the knife that Wreav dropped earlier, a long and wicked looking thing, then stomped back towards his brother. Wreav was still moaning pitifully on the deck when Wrex plunged the knife down into his chest, directly into his primary heart, then pulled it out and plunged it straight into Wreav’s secondary heart and harshly twisted it left and right and looked into the eyes of a dying Wreav, snarling as the life drained out of them. After the last spark of life went out of his eyes Wrex wrenched the knife out of Wreav’s chest and wiped the blood off on his clothes.

“Wreav is now only an empty shell. Toss him out the nearest airlock!” Wrex commanded. A small number of marines came forward and carried the dead krogan off the hangar deck and into one of the smaller airlocks, then unceremoniously flushed Wreav into space.

Wrex merely stood there and watched.

“So, who’s going to inform Commander Shepard?” Kaidan asked.

Garrus gave the Alliance mole a turian smirk. “I think you just volunteered yourself!”

Kaidan took a quick look at the lift. “I’ll notify him in a few hours. I don’t think he would appreciate being interrupted right now.”

Garrus’ smirk grew a little. “Then you and Vega can help me get these crates up to the Main Battery room and help me complete the main gun’s installation.”

“Better that than an angry Commander Shepard,” said Kaidan as both he and Lieutenant Vega got the required crates.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**Unknown Location; Z+5 Hours**

In an expansive office with a view of a pulsating red and blue sun a man wearing an expensive suit and sitting in an elaborate office chair studied a holographic pad with a certain Alliance Navy Commando’s, now Citadel Council Spectre, bio as he sipped from his little tumbler of bourbon. Shepard had in the last two years proven himself to be one hell of a pain in his organization’s butt, and he had been trying to recruit the tenacious bastard ever since he proved himself at the Battle of the Citadel. Today had not been a good day for the Illusive Man.

He thought that his best bet had been Miranda Lawson, a beautiful woman with an even sharper mind, might have been able to entice him into bed with his organization. If he indeed led the attack on Minuteman Station then Shepard has proven himself to be too much of a rogue element for his plans as he finished reading a report about the destruction of Minuteman Station and the possible theft of his latest warship, the _Carthage SR-2_. A small ping sounded from the Quantum Entanglement Communicator(QEC) installed in the floor of his office.

Moments later a life-sized hologram of a human in Cerberus Shade Armour, sans helmet, displaying his mixed Asian Slavic ancestry, despite the Delumcore Overlay headgear he wore.

“Agent Kai Leng, report!”

_“We’ve found the Minuteman Station’s black box and we’ve confirmed that Commander Shepard led the attack, and that it was Miranda Lawson that set off the self-destruct. However since we know that the ship launched before the station self-destructed and we haven’t seen any sign of the SR-2 at any of our backup sites, we have to assume that Shepard took it.”_

This made the Illusive Man tighten his modified eyes, but that was all the emotion he would let past his mask. “Very well. Have your techs continue their analysis of the data and begin a search for the SR-2. I want that ship back and as intact as possible!”

_“No promises sir. My specialty leans more towards elimination, rather than retrieval. May I recommend that you abandon your base of operations. It might be possible that Miranda Lawson may be compromised. Commander Shepard is known to be a most charismatic and charming individual.”_ A barely concealed scowl marred his face. _“He certainly was during our days at ICT.”_

If the Illusive Man’s face was merely impassive, it was downright stony now. “Is that merely your dislike for the Commander speaking, or do you have some evidence that Miranda Lawson might have turned traitor?”

_“Not necessarily of her own volition. She might have been taken prisoner, or perhaps her control chip has been discovered and removed,”_ said Leng. _“Can you imagine what her reaction would be if she found out that Cerberus had her chipped?”_

The Illusive Man thought over the possibility and remembered that Miranda had over the last year and a half been working to bring Commander Shepard into the fold, and her reports had generally been positive, but guarded at the same time. She also was against the remote controlled suicide implant, remembering her call it a ‘murder implant,’ before he implanted a control chip in her brain during a routine medical check-up and changed her mind.

“A distinct possibility. If she truly has gone over to Shepard’s side eliminate her and any of her compatriots she has liberated from our control.”

Kai Leng bowed his head. _“By your command,”_ he said as his hologram winked out.

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

**SR-2; Deck 2, bridge, Z+11.7 Hours**

A fresh faced Commander Shepard and Miranda Lawson came onto the bridge. Hawthorne saw the two of them in a rear-view mirror he’d set up so that he didn’t have to turn the chair around to see who was behind him.

“Commander Shepard, Director Lawson,” greeted Hawthorne as he concentrated on piloting the SR-2. “Good timing sirs, we are just about to enter the Asgard system.”

The SR-2 quickly passed the system’s Oort cloud and into the system itself, slowing down from FTL to a more sedate 50% of light-speed, and headed straight for the first planet in the system, Terra Nova. In orbit was a large, ugly and misshapen asteroid, designated X57, with numerous craters and holes drilled into the surface. One particular crater though was larger than most and had active running lights around the perimeter. From a hidden hanger a flight of four F-61 Trident class fighters launched and headed directly on an intercept course.

“Sir, we’ve just been challenged by a flight of Alliance fighters,” Hawthorne reported as he applied reverse thrust to slow down for final approach.

Shepard walked over to a nearby communications console. “This is Commander Shepard, transmitting clearance codes.”

A few moments later the four Alliance fighters took up escort positions alongside the SR-2. One of them even shook its wings, an age old pilot’s greeting.

_“This is Wolves Den Tower requesting you turn over control of your helm to us,”_ said a pleasant enough sounding female Alliance operator.

Shepard nodded reassuringly to Hawthorne who nodded back as he turned over control. The normally gold and orange console holograms turned to a reassuring blue.

“Wolves Den Tower you have control?” asked Shepard as he winked at Miranda who merely shook her head.

_“Affirmative, Commander Shepard. Enjoy the ride, and welcome home!”_

“ _SSV Blackbird SR-2_ confirms,” said Shepard, much to Miranda’s surprise.

“I thought you were keeping the original name?” she asked.

“There’s already an _SSV Carthage_ in the Alliance Navy, and since this is the first Alliance destroyer, or as most races would call her a super frigate, I get to choose the name. What better name for a stealth ship?”

Miranda shook her head at her man, while a short giggle sounded from a slight distortion in the air.

“I like it,” said Kasumi as she disengaged her tactical cloak. “I think it matches our commander’s purpose.” Miranda smiled at the younger woman then turned back to the view outside.

Within minutes the _Blackbird_ came in to hover over the crater and slowly lowered itself down and through a series of armoured doors that only opened when the ship was a few metres above them and quickly sealed themselves after as they were led deeper and deeper into the complex.

“Quite impressive for an Alliance facility,” said Miranda as she took in the view of multiple hangar bays as the ship rotated as it went down the transit tunnel. The hangars were mostly filled with fighters, but a couple of them housed a corvette or two.

Shepard nodded back. “Once most of the minerals were extracted the Terra Nova government began to refit the mining facilities into an orbital space port. The Alliance Engineering Corps assisted with construction. I brought up the idea of also building a small shipyard for starship maintenance. What we’re in right now is the Skunkworks section. I think you can guess what its named after?”

The _Blackbird_ was led into a larger hangar bay where an old friend sat docked. The _SSV Normandy SR-1_ , the much smaller older brother to the SR-2 class. Moments later the _Blackbird_ settled into the dock and docking clamps locked down onto the hull and wings as a long gantry-tube extended towards the forward airlock. Shepard and Miranda headed towards the airlock and awaited their latest guest.

Not long after, after the tell-tale noise of decontamination completed itself the inner doors of the airlock opened to admit a tall, bald, dark skinned man wearing an Alliance Navy officer’s uniform, whom Shepard sharply saluted while both Miranda and Kasumi merely bowed their heads to in greeting.

“Permission to come aboard?” the Alliance Captain asked in a deep voice as he returned the salute.

“Permission granted. Welcome aboard the _Blackbird_ , Captain Anderson!” said Commander Shepard as the two old comrades in arms grasped each other’s hands.

“Well, it seems congratulations are in order, Shepard. Good work.” Captain Anderson then surveyed the two ladies that accompanied his most trusted soldier. “I assume these two are either Cerberus defectors or part of the assault team?”

“My apologies, sir. This is Kasumi Goto, a stealth and tech expert. A recent associate of mine,” said Shepard as Kasumi bowed deeply as befitting a man of Anderson’s rank. “And this is Miranda Lawson, the Cerberus Operative that tried to recruit me last year, sir. I believe that was in my report?”

Captain Anderson appraised the beautiful woman before him. She reminded him of some of the colder Systems Alliance Intelligence(SAI) agents he had worked with in the past. Cold, clinical and highly intelligent was all he could get from her stance and eyes. He reached out his hand and she took it in a surprisingly strong grip.

“A pleasure to meet you, Captain,” said Miranda in a neutral tone. All shields up, both kinetic and personal.

“Nice to see the face behind the reports. I assume she has your full trust, Commander?” the Captain asked.

“Yes sir. Every ex-Cerberus member aboard has my trust...” began Shepard.

“But you should probably monitor all of us closely,” said Miranda. “Not everyone may have been implanted with activated control chips, like I and a few others were.”

Anderson nodded to her. “That’s exactly what SAI is going to do, however due to your familiarity with both this ship and Cerberus operations it is more than likely that we will let you work with Shepard in whatever capacity he deems you useful for. He’s a Spectre and has already pardoned every former Cerberus defector you brought with you.” He then smiled at all three. “How about we start with an inspection of the ship?“

**((((((((((Shiver ME Relays))))))))))**

AN:I hope my readers have enjoyed this little interlude. Don’t hold your breath for the next chapter. College exams are around the corner.


End file.
